


Hope for Death

by Alexharrier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 66,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2750120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexharrier/pseuds/Alexharrier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There comes a certain amount of complication to life when the world descends into a zombie apocalypse, but you certainly didn't sign up for watching your best friend die. When Jake is bitten it changes the course of you and your friends mission for survival, now you have to do it with a zombie in tow.  Bad situations get worse however while compensating for Jake's new disposition, and when you begin to learn the true caliber of the pandemic and it's consequences while balancing demands from your past, you begin to wonder what it is that you're hoping for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> NEW POSTING SCHEDULE:  
> so I've used up my buffer of chapters, and am currently halfway through writing chapter 10. I want to keep posting semi regularly but in order to do that I need to catch myself up a bit. so! here is how I will update the next few chapters:
> 
> DUE TO THE FACT THAT I HAVE BEEN IN THE LAB EVERY NIGHT TILL MIDNIGHT FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS THERE IS NO UPDATE. I hate to do this, but I've got to finish this semester before I can let myself write, I'm just too behind in everything. so, no update this week, there probably won't be an update until April 19th at the soonest. I'll fix the schedule when I know for sure.  
> Chapter 10 March 26  
> Chapter 11 April 9  
> Chapter 12 April 23  
> chapter 13 May 7  
> Chapter 14 May 21.
> 
> And it may happen that at some point I'll have a ton of time to write and I'll post more frequently. but if not this is what I will do. besides, now that we know there's word of 2.0, fanfiction for this crazy train will never die, right? I can't be blamed for not finishing before the comic haha.
> 
>   
> pray for me this semester will be hell haha.
> 
> EDIT2:haha a year later again, I'm gonna try again! I've written two chapters on break, and though I might die I'm going to keep writing this this semester. It keeps me sane. plus it's a lot easier to keep something going once you have some momentum.
> 
> Get excited! this will be finished this year It's a goal.
> 
> Edit Edit 3: REVISIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED!  I will probably be revising some of this at some point, (mostly chapters 1-3) because it isn't very consistent. I apologize! Hopefully by the time I post chapter 8 the revisions will be done. It shouldn't be a ton different, just maybe better. a little. sorry. 
> 
> On Revisions: "He's the man we were in search of, that's true," says Hardy's rustic constable, "and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted."
> 
> yeah. so. This is a homestuck fic but I am a super platonic person, so shipping, I donno. As for characters, I am doing my best to portray them as accurately as I can in an AU, turns out that's really hard, and I'm sorry if I portray anyone less than someone's standard. also I am sorry to all Eriden fans he is a fantastic babe, sorry. 
> 
> I'm sure I'll say more at some point, but for now, there you go.

**Dirk: Explain the Last Few Days**

The world is a mess. Of course the world was a mess before too. But now it’s even worse. You had never really taken pop culture seriously, so those years before when people would joke about the hell you’re living through now you never really paid attention. You would laugh at the fad, thinking that there is absolutely no possibility of there being any fraction of reality behind the wild imaginations of a few talented screen writers and hordes of less talented copycats. A newspaper blows across your path, heralding the largest irony you think your life has thrown at you. 

Strictly speaking though the whole ordeal hasn’t been that bad. Honestly it’s hard to understand how it all happened so fast. The first few days were absolute panic, people clogging the roadways and dumping thousands of dollars on plane tickets and train tickets trying to get away, to outrun the monstrosity that they had spun from their minds. When they realized that there wasn’t any way out, that there wasn’t any escaping, that the National Guard wasn’t coming to evacuate, and the CDC didn’t have a plan everything just fell to pieces. Fathers abandoned their families. Mothers could be heard screaming for children. Suicides were prevalent. Once upright citizens committed crime with abandon. Vandalism. Arson. Murder. All over a few slow moving corpses that collapse with one headshot. What a thin line we tread. What utter complete bullshit. 

Early on you learned the best strategy was to stay put. The first twenty four hours were easy. Couple movies, scroll through people losing their shit on tumblr, you even made use of the situation and cooked yourself dinner. While the internet was still working you kept up with your friends on your chat client, and tried to block out the sound of chaos reigning outside. Once you caught sight of your first zombie from your 11th story window, you decided it would probably be best if you guys got together. Like in person. 

Let’s be completely honest. You’re not scared of zombies. Sure they make you uneasy, as much as any grey skinned moaning invalid stumbling aimlessly towards their next meal would, but then again, isn’t that kind of how trolls are? You’ve met a few. You’re unimpressed. 

Okay, maybe that was a little harsh.

But you’re not gonna take it back.

“Dirk look up there.”

Looking back you see Jane pointing to something ahead, and you follow her arm to the rooftop. At first you don’t notice anything out of the ordinary, dirty walls, some trash, some idiot’s arm hanging over the edge,--wait. You squint a little. Just noticeably the limp body on top of the low ledged corner-store was shifting with a weight that was not its own.

“Alright, let’s try the next block,” your hand drifts to the handle of your sword. “Looks like he’s busy, but let’s not push our luck.”

That was the third you’d seen today. Well you guess in his case you didn’t actually see him, but that’s plenty okay with you. 

With unwarranted authority you lead your group back along the alley you came, the girls Jane and Roxy in the middle, and Jake bringing up the rear. It isn’t really questioned that you’re the one calling the shots. Since the first few days together that was how it was. Admittedly you’re not sure how you feel about it. You guess it doesn’t really matter. You step around yet another dismembered body and continue on in the search of a corner store with some food. 

Really that is the hardest part about the world ending thing. There weren’t any delivery trucks to restock your favorite grocery store, or as is more common in your case, Chinese restaurant. The zombies you could live with. It’s certainly preferable to the cacophony of the first days, especially now that the first wave has run its course, and many of those that were first infected are busy wasting away due to their own personal draught of sustenance. Life’s a bitch when you’re a mindless walking virus that consumes its fuel faster than it would ever replenish. 

Now it’s just you and your friends. You talk about the weather, laugh over the weird shapes in the grime and blood that seems to cover most walls, and stay alive. Occasionally you’d see a disappearing shadow, or eyes that peer at you from high windows--signs of the few others remaining with you, but they always kept to themselves. 

After navigating your way through the tight corners and switchbacks between 6th and 7th and jumped the fence behind old mac’s garage, the 7/11 is in sight. It, like everything else, looks a little worse for wear. The open sign was cracked and unlit, windows turning brown with dust, a couple cars abandoned by the pumps, but it was relatively unmolested. The four of you wait silently for five minutes, that was what you guys had agreed upon after the last time you were caught by surprise while recovering peas from a the back of a darkened smiths grocery. Needless to say Roxy put plenty of holes through your new friend. You wonder if he’s still lying there. It’s impossible to remember if you dispatched that one properly. You’d been too busy running.

The minutes pass. There’s not sign of movement. You feel good about this one. 

It turns out that the sliding door won’t open on its own. Without power it’s about as mobile as the concrete sidewalk beneath your feet. “Let me,” Jake takes your place manhandling the door. You nod and stand back while he screws in his silencer and shoots out the lock. With a couple more yanks together it slides open with relative ease. 

The reward is a corner store fully stocked with food packed with enough preservatives to last through the next apocalypse. Each of you pack your backpacks with as much as you can carry, you also stop to swipe some batteries and another flashlight. While you’re behind the counter you notice a small personal cooler hiding out behind the dormant computer tower. You lift the lid and find what you think is the single greatest accomplishment today: a loaf of bread. First making sure that it is indeed intact, and hadn’t any of the telltale green spots of mold you lift it up over the cash register like an Olympic trophy. “Guys, we can have sandwiches.” 

It takes little time to find appropriate fillings, nobody touches the peanut butter, Jane and Roxy spread half a container of Nutella on their four slices, Jake goes for butter and jam, you however opt for honey. Satisfied with the spoils of your raid, your group settles outside to enjoy this victory in the sunlight. 

 

**Jake: Be a Gentleman and Clean Your Weapon**

After finishing lunch none of you are quite ready to move on yet. The late afternoon is almost beautiful, the sun drifting through shafts of dusty haze, turning the world golden. It’s nearly possible to believe that an army of the undead isn’t about to attack at any second. 

Roxy teases Jane about her choices in food supplies, rifling through her backpack to find the boxes of red spoon labeled product. “Ooh Bluebergy mufshins, bluegerby muppins, shit, blueberry muffins. Good hic*choice.” Jane snatches them back. “there is definitely ervy poshibility we’re gonna find the eggsh to bake those wif.” 

Jane laughs good naturedly and just shakes her head, “Roxy it is astounding the things you can do on a bottle of Pinot Noir.”

“It really is an accomplishment miss Lalond,” you call from your spot on the smoker’s bench. A dismantled M19 lies on your cleaning cloths around you, your hands working absentmindedly to clean the grit out of your silencer. “Just imagine the providence that each stop we’ve made has yielded the proper spirits to maintain your state of bliss. And even grander is how enthusiastically you consume them.” 

“Ha Ha, English. Very funny. I’ve been shaving them too! Slaving? Saving.” She triumphantly holds up the dark green bottle of wine. You shake your head and laugh at the empty bottle. “What?! What are you laughing at? Oh shit. Well, neverrmind.”

Returning to your work you finish off the barrel and begin to piece the handgun back together. It’s calming, being able to focus on something routine, something so familiar to your hands it is second nature. It almost lets you relax. You’re so consumed with the simple task that it takes a little while to feel his gaze. You try not to smile as you notice his dark bushido shades are not trained on the street around you, and you fail to rationalize that it’s the sun that’s making your neck hot. “Eyes up chap,” you say, replacing the clip, and the way his head snaps back to look down the road makes you crack into a smile. 

“Sheriously Dirk you’re on guard.” Roxy jibes, her drunken giggles coming out in honks. “you can graze into the eyez of your boyfreind later.” Jane snorts at Rox, but says nothing. You sigh. The sunlight is warm, you have your friends, and life is good. The corners of your mouth curl up and you look back up at Dirk. It’s easy to tell the back of his neck is flushed, and despite his pale complexion it isn’t sunburn.

“You know guys we really should--” you don’t get to finish that sentence. Because as Dirk turned to look at you one of the undead rose from behind the nearest gas pump to charge at your… friend? Boyfriend? All you know is that you have just enough time to yell his name and raise your gun. His eyes widen a little, but he doesn’t flinch as you place a well-aimed round through the zombie’s skull. It collapses before it gets the chance to collide with Dirk.

There are more that follow. They always hunt in packs. Dirk draws his sword, and Roxy primes her rifle with much more authority than one would expect from the inebriated. They draw close together, Jane at Roxy’s flank, a three foot decorative fork re-designated as a weapon stained red with the blood of the dead at the ready for any that manage to come too close. They begin to move towards the north, and you rush to shove the rest of your cleaning supplies back in your pack to follow them. You let loose two more shots that take out a runner, and fill in your position at the rear of the pack. Dirk cuts down those that are stupid enough to get in his way, Roxy and Jane work in unison, Jane pinning down the close ones, so that you or Rox can perforate it, while you both work on thinning the crowd at a distance. Dirk clears a path out of the mob and signals with a whistle. You all know it’s time to run. There’s only so much ammunition to go around, and you can’t waste it trying to kill every last zombie. One last shot to finish the one you’d been working on and you turn to let loose. The first couple of steps you’re right behind Roxy, catching up with her stride, but suddenly your collar chokes you to a stop. 

It’s an effort to reach behind you to loosen the demons’ grip, but before you can find its hand the rest begin to close around side. Panicking you begin to pick off the ones in front, shooting rapid fire. The one behind you grabs your right arm and you struggle, throwing your elbow into its half-nose, trying to get your footing to pull away. Your aim is no longer accurate, you do your best, but the stray thought occurs to you that it’s impossible to multitask when there’s a zombie hanging on your arm. A hand reaches from below to wrap around your waist, and another reaches toward you from the advancing force. You level your gun as a cold palm grips your face, pulling you backward; your wild scream is inseparable from the sound of your firing gun. The sightless eyes ahead of you snap back in its head. In that instant your pain is mingled with the dead’s as teeth meet in your right arm. 

All it serves to do is make you angry. You pull the gun back and aim it over your shoulder, at the face you refuse to look at. With the pull of the trigger, the weight pulling you backwards disappears, and this time there’s nothing to stop you from running. 

As the distance between you and them increases, the anger fades, and cold fear seeps into your chest. You turn a corner and continue to widen the gap. With your pistols in a death grip you take a chance to look at the damage, and the realization hits you just how deep you are in it. You’ve been bitten. That’s it. You’re done. The breath in your chest freezes and seems to strangle you: you have to stop and get a grip. 

You look up. None of this city is recognizable to you, and you’d lost sight of the group during your struggle. Your eyes sting as you realize that there’s the real possibility that you will never see them again. You can’t believe he convinced you to come downtown; it would have been safer for all of you weather this holocaust at your cabin. Hands on your knees you suck in breath. Come on. Calm down. Your heart rate slows a little, but not by much. For the first time you can really tell how hard it’s pounding, circulating the deadly plague through your system. There isn’t much time. It’s hard to know how much, having never watched an infected turn from bite to death it’s impossible to know whether you can even make it back to them in time. And then when they see you it’s easy for you to see yourself receiving the same treatment that all those half souls had. Dirks blade.

You swallow. Despite how fast and hard your heart is beating, you don’t feel any different, and the only course that seems reasonable is to decide that it will continue to be that way. So, next course of action, where did they go? Observing the surroundings you notice a familiar landmark in the skyline, and decide to head east. It isn’t long before you can hear Roxy and Jane laughing, the lilting sound drifting from the left. It hits you that they haven’t noticed yet. Your panic must not have taken as long as you thought. Hesitation grips you and as they come to a stop you hear Jane say “Where’s Jake?”

You peek around the corner, fearing what you have to do next. 

Dirk stops and spins around. “I thought he was right behind us?” He looks between them. 

I was behind you,” Jane says, “Roxy did he trip?” 

Did he trip? You snort and fall into the wall behind you, dark humor crushing the air from your lungs. Well, at least you can set that fact straight. You might be a damn fool, but you did not trip, like some addled child who forgets to tie their shoelaces. 

“No, I didn’t see…” you hear Roxy say. 

“Well where did he go?” Dirk asks. 

You can’t let them wait like this, it’s cruel. More so than owning up to your fault. You suck in a shaky breath, and walk around the corner. 

It takes a few seconds for them to notice, enough time to close half the distance. You use your left hand to feebly shield the damage, but you know from the blood dripping down to your fingers there’s no way they’ll miss it. You kick a can on purpose: it clatters loudly bringing all eyes to you. 

“Jake!” Jane says, starting toward you before she stops. Her hand covers her mouth as she gasps. 

“Oh no,” Roxy says aloud, saying what everyone is thinking. She massages her own right arm and hisses, “Oh shit.” 

You even see Dirk’s eyes widen behind his glasses. 

You stop a few feet from them, mouth dry. You don’t know what to say. Looking at the ground you think, you shouldn’t be putting them through this. 

The guilt comes out in your voice. “I uh,” you swallow and start again. “I guess this is as far as I go.” 

“Wh-what happened?” Jane asks, taking a step closer. You cringe, hiding your arm. 

“I—,” you huff nervously, and then take a deep breath. “I was running, and then one of them grabbed me and I—I couldn’t shake him off.” 

She looks at you helplessly. You avert your gaze to the ground. This is rather crummy, if you’ll allow yourself the understatement. 

Someone needs to say it. “I guess,” you steel yourself and continue. “I… Dirk, I don’t want to become one of them. I don’t want to hurt anybody.” 

You look up at him now, but he isn’t looking at you. You’re terrified, but you both know what has to happen. “You know what you have to do,” you say. 

His eyes open, with a spark of defiance, “Stop.” 

That single word takes you by surprise. He turns to Roxy. “Do you still have some of that hydrogen peroxide left?” 

She jumps a little, you notice she was staring. “Yeah, what did you think I’d drink it?” she shuffles through the contents of her pack and comes up with the brown bottle. “Here,” she says, handing it to him. 

He walks up to you with the bottle. “Here,” he says, “Let me see it.” 

“What?” you say confused. 

“Let me see your arm.” 

You do as he says, and watch as he unscrews the cap, numb. Then he pours a small stream over the bite, and suddenly your arm is on fire. 

“AAAUGH.” He hangs onto your arm as you struggle not to flinch away, “Son of a curmudgeon that stings like a bastard!” 

As you try not to curl into a ball of pain you hear the sound of tearing fabric. You look up and see Jane pull the hem off her shirt, and push her way around Dirk to get at your arm. She ties a makeshift tourniquet, which slowly deadens the feeling in your arm to a dull ache. 

Jane steps back, and Dirk appraises her work, “That should buy us some time at least.” 

You look at both of them. “Why?” you ask. 

Jane looks at Dirk who swallows. “We need to just be calm about this. We’ll figure something out,” he says. He looks up at you, and you can’t help but grimace a smile of reassurance. “How are you feeling?”

That makes you swallow. “I don’t know,” you say, because you really don’t. “Like me?” 

He measures your answer and nods. It’s the best any of you could hope for. “Okay.” 

Without further comment he wraps an arm around your shoulder and you set off.

 

**Jake: Try Not to Let On How Shitty You Feel**

Dirk leads your group through the darkening streets. You know you shouldn’t feel this cold, but when the sun went down half an hour ago your body seemed to lose its ability to generate its own heat. Your arm was numb, absently with arms crossed you massage your shoulder and try to create friction to stop your shivering. Being as quiet as possible you don’t want the others to know, but it takes most of your effort to keep going. Right foot. Left foot. Breath in. breath out. The sound of your ragged breath is audible, but the others don’t notice until you start coughing. It sounds absolutely awful, and it feels even worse. It’s the only noise that breaks the silence for several minutes.

Dirk halts at a door, any of them will do really, and after negotiating it open and a quick perimeter sweep his head returns to the doorway. “Let’s stop here for tonight.” 

He turns the lights on after pulling the blinds, and you marvel a little at one of the last apartments with power. The girls eye you as you’re the last one in, and you almost immediately collapse on the couch. You try to stay upright and sit to fake good health, but instead manage a leaning position propped up by your good arm. _Pride isn’t worth much at this point chap_ you tell yourself as you try not to let Roxy and Jane’s stares sear your sides.

“Alright, who’s hungry?” The question is so out of place you can’t help but look up. Dirk was standing in what could be considered the kitchen of this postage stamp apartment, scrutinizing what was left in the fridge. “Roxy, Jane you want anything?” he asks pulling a yogurt from the back to smell. “Jake how ‘bout you, you up for anything?”

You frown. It’s hard to think, you have a headache and your head is spinning. What the hell is he doing? “No, thanks.”

“Girls sure you don’t want anything? This yogurt’s still good.” They train their glares at dirk. Jane is absolutely scathing. Without any words she pushes past Dirk sparing no shoulders, and hurries into the back rooms. You think you can hear her crying. Roxy catches you by surprise, wrapping herself around your shoulders. “Goodbye Jaky. Er, I mean, goodnyte, no goodnight,” and with that, she follows her friend through the back and slowly closes the door. 

Giving a little shrug to loosen the tightness in your throat, you say with as much finality as Roxy’s hug, “Well, I guess that’s it then.” This time Dirk doesn’t try to contradict you. He sets the yogurt on the counter; you lean back into the couch and close your eyes. The cushions sink beside you and you’re surprised by yet another question. 

“Come on man, how about an apple? Or maybe just a juice box?” looking at the food offered in his hands your stomach quickly decides it wants nothing to do with it. Your hand shoots to your mouth to try and combat the bile, but you have to lean over the couch for fear of losing. Clenching your jaws together you swallow it down with limited success. You feel him lean away, “I guess that’s a no then.” 

Using your hand to wipe your cheeks you confirm with a glance the taste that filled your mouth: blood. That isn’t great. You look back at him and see the recognition in his eyes, he can see it too. With a huff he leaves you alone on the couch.

You watch him pace around a little, put the apple and juice back, and then stop, lost in his thoughts hands running through his hair. “Dirk you know what you have to do.” He looks at you. “I don’t think I could do it myself. Just—just do it when I’m asleep. It’ll be quick, I won’t even feel it.” He doesn’t say anything. Instead his feet lead him to a closet, he retrieves two pillows and some blankets, keeping a pillow for himself and throwing the rest at you. 

“We’ll talk about it in the morning.” He turns out the lights, you hear him shuffle around a little and then settle on the floor. You sigh and curl up toward the back of the couch, and hope for eternal sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, before I forget since I deleted these notes, this chapter deals a bit with suicide, as a warning of sorts. I just want those who need to to stay safe!

**Dirk: Exhaust Every Possibility of Hope**

That night it is impossible to sleep. When you factor in that you laid down fully clothed without a blanket, and slept on your sword, coupled with the proverbial pneumonic elephant in the room it was all you could do just to close your eyes. Eventually the irregular breathing settled down beside you and you knew he was asleep. You wish it would be as easy for you. 

What are you doing? Better question, what are you going to do? Every option at this point seems like utter hell, but your mind won’t let you rest until it finds the solution. Look at the facts. Your friend has been infected by a plague that has taken the minds and lives of millions. It’s only a matter of time before he turns, and the irrational glimmer of hope that he’ll be immune is non-existent. Not only would his breathing suggest he’s not doing well, but there has never been a case of immunity reported. At least not before the reports stopped. Your mind drifts to think about those people you found in their last moments, trembling begging for help, and the only way you could help them then was by ending it before it began. They were mercy killings, but the thought of repeating the drama with Jake just makes you sick. _No! There has to be another way._

As the night matures sleep deprivation leads you to more impossible theories. If you cut off the arm, ground zero of infection, would he be able to beat it? Would the impromptu surgery send him into shock and end him in a worse state than just letting it take its course? What if you could slow him down, put him in a coma? Blood transfusion? Keep him in a meat locker until you could find a cure? Cryogenics?

This continues until some point long past midnight, when you sense movement beside you. You open your eyes to see him sitting up on the couch. Glasses off, he stares blankly at the wall over your head. “Hey,” you say, thinking he must be as frantic as you are, “how’s it going buddy?” Jake doesn’t answer. His eyes drift slowly down at you, and you frown at the lack of recognition there. There’s sound from the back rooms, Jane turning over in her bed, or Roxy falling onto the floor, and his gaze trains on the door. “Jake ‘you alright?” unease is rising in your chest. He stares for a long time. Minutes. Not wanting to upset him you stay very still. He blinks. Then, just as suddenly he sat up, he stands, and instead of heading further into the apartment he turns stumbling and lets himself out the front. 

Oh no. you get up and follow him. “Jake!” you call at the door. It takes you a second to see him in the dark, but then there he is. He isn’t running, but he isn’t walking steadily either. His movement is halting, quick then slow, a stumble and a trot. His head turns side to side, almost as if he’s looking for something. Then, he stops, pressed awkwardly against a building, stalking the corner. By the time he leaps into the alley you’re running after him.

What you see in the alley is not what you wanted to. But it’s also not what you expected. At first you have to take a step back and swallow your disgust, but your curiosity is killing you. You need to know what’s going on, what’s happening to your friend. You turn the corner and there he is, hunched over the alley rat he’d caught by surprised, which was now dead, and quickly being consumed. “Jake?” you call at him, he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy with the rat. “Jake.” You take a few steps toward him, and this time he notices. Defensively he growls at you, but his look isn’t angry, it’s blank, a non-expression covered in more gore than you care to acknowledge. The unearthly sound makes you hesitate, but he doesn’t leap at you. You try another step. He leaps at you. 

The force at which he throws you into the brick wall behind you knocks the wind from your chest. You expect a mauling, eyes squinted shut, waiting for the teeth. _This is it,_ you think, _this is when I get killed by my best friend._ His breath is hot on your face, the gurgling growl of sickness loud and think, but he doesn’t bite you. You open your eyes, and realize you’d been restraining his advance by the throat. Together you stay, not quite struggling, you’re holding him back and he’s holding you down, but that is the extent of the attack. You do the first thing that comes to mind in such a position of defense, and connect knee to groin. Hard. Jake’s eyes focus as the growl changes to a groan of pain.

“AAaaauugh what the hell, man?” he releases you and slumps to the ground holding his jewels. “Where are my glasses?” he rubs his eyes. 

You take a step back to look at him. His demeanor is entirely different, and he looks up at you with one eye. “You mean,” you swallow. “You don’t remember.”

“Why, what happened,” he looks around “Why are we outside?” he leans against the dumpster behind him, completely confused, expression pleading you for an explanation.

“Uhm, well…” you explain as best you can that he’d woken up and come out here himself. And that he’d decided he had a sudden craving for rat. When he finds the mangled carcass in the darkness you see him turn pale, a hand shoots to his mouth but he pulls it away when he feels the sticky evidence there. He pulls himself up the side of the dumpster to hurl. You honestly don’t blame him. 

After a minute he finishes, and shuddering settles on the ground. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I just can’t.” You look at him thoughtfully. When he sees it his eyes light up with anger. “Dirk you can’t possibly think that this is okay! I can’t do this!”

“Okay but listen, hear me out.” It wasn’t a solution. But it was something. “This is different. I’m not going to pretend that you didn’t just mindlessly eat half a rat, but no listen! Back in the apartment you could have easily chosen me, or gone after Roxy, or Jane _but you didn’t._ On some level you recognized us somehow, _and you went to go find something else._ That can’t be an accident.” You take a breath, and he doesn’t interrupt. “If there’s a way somehow, that you won’t hurt us… then I guess it’s preferable to the alternative. Until we can find a cure.”

He doesn’t look happy. But you can tell he’s considering the situation. He shakes his head. “Dirk how do you know that this isn’t just how it starts? How do you know I won’t turn on you? How many other people have led themselves to infection because they didn’t want to watch someone else disappear? I don’t want to be the one that kills you!”

You think about it. “I guess I don’t.” you sit down on the pavement beside him. “But I’m willing to take the risk.” 

He looks up at you and this time his anger comes out. “You don’t get it! I don’t remember coming out here, I wasn’t conscious! Call it sleep walking call it whatever you want but I didn’t _decide_ anything, it just happened! There’s no way I could stop myself—,” you watch as he freezes mid rant. The breath hitches in his throat, his eyes unfocused, and he stares. 

“Jake?” you ask, not sure that he’ll answer. He doesn’t. It’s strange how still he is leaning against the wall, he isn’t even breathing. You wave a hand in front of his eyes, but there’s no response. “Jake,” giving his shoulders a shake you say his name again. His head bobs around a bit, but he doesn’t change. Your chest tightens, you feel helpless, the blank stare reminding you of the epileptic kid in high school, a lifetime away. You’d only seen him seize once, it was nothing grand or traumatic, but the gaze was just the same. You have to snap him out of it. The only thing that comes to mind was the look of pain from a few minutes ago. The flat of your hand cracks loudly when it slaps his cheek.

“OOoow Jezus!” he’s holding his jaw, rubbing the tender spot. The look of pain quickly fades to realization, “I did it again, didn’t I?” 

You nod not trusting yourself to speak.

“Dirk please.” He says. “I’m sorry but you have to. This isn’t fair.” 

His insistence makes you frustrated. “Jake, I can’t. You know why I can’t.” 

He huffs a humorless laugh. “I would have thought after I shot you down you’d be furious with me.” 

“I’m not.” You tell him. Not with him anyway. You stand up and look away. 

“You should be,” he keeps on. “I’ve done a right awful job of things. If it were me, I’d be fed up. I’d be crosser than… I can’t think of what, but I’d be cross.” 

“I don’t want to get into our relationship problems Jake. Not right now. Not when you’re…” _dying._ You don’t finish that thought. If he’s trying to make you mad he’s doing a pretty good job. 

“Yeah well, if we didn’t have problems you wouldn’t be hesitating.” He watches you. “And you know what? I was the one who started this mess, because I wanted to see if I would feel anything. Isn’t that funny?” he laughs harder, shaking his head. “I was so wrong.” 

“Stop it! You want to know what’s not fair?!” you’re shouting suddenly. “The fact that you expect me to just off you because ‘I’m good at that.’ The fact that you’re intentionally provoking me!” you ball your fists, and pace around him. “The fact that you hit a rough patch and just give up! You rally whenever anyone else struggles, why won’t you just stick up for yourself?” 

He rocks back against the wall as if physically struck. He starts to say something, and then stops. 

“And the worst part is you’re probably right! I should kill you. But I can’t!” 

He murmurs something, glaring at the ground. You think you heard him, and offense threatens to rise within you, but you’re not sure. 

“What?” you ask. “Speak up. You know I can’t hear you when you mumble like that.” 

He looks straight at you, a tear escaping down his face. “You would do it if you loved me.” 

Your cool flies so far off the handle it ceases to exist. “You know what, I’ve had it. If you really want to die that badly, fine. But I’m not going to do it.” 

“Fine,” he says, expression going weirdly stiff. He pulls a small revolver from his belt, where you hadn’t even realized he’d been hiding it. You watch as he brings the barrel level with his temple. 

You freeze up, everything inside conflicting like locked gears. Your heart jumps into your throat with fear, crying with the impulse to grab the gun out of his hand, but you don’t. Instead you watch, too hurt and too stubborn to do anything. Then the stray thought intrudes, maybe this would be better to see than to watch him deteriorate into something else. Something unrecognizable. 

“I can’t let you do this to yourself. Goodbye Dirk.” 

You wait, his eyes stare into yours. Sucking in a deep breath he squints his eyes shut, fingers trembling. The seconds stretch and you notice every minute detail, the tension in his knuckles, the chipped barrel of the gun. His teeth grit and you flinch, but then he releases the breath in a gasp, lowering the gun. The tension breaks, he sets the gun on the ground, and glares at the wall, obviously disgusted with himself. 

You have a moment of irrational fury. You breathe in, letting it build, a ball of anger you have for all the wrong reasons. Then you force yourself to breathe it out. It leaves you a mess of rattling nerves in its wake. You desperately wish you could fix this. Find a way to go back and not leave him behind, but at the same time knowing you can’t. 

Instead you do what you want to, wrap your arms around his shoulders and hold him tight. You can feel him shudder, shoulders shaking with quiet silent sobs, tears making your neck wet. You bury your face in his shoulder, letting yourself feel relief. 

When you pull away you can see the fear in his eyes. You know you have to say something. “I promise I’m going to do everything I can to make this better. And if you ever stop acting like the stupid sentimental idiot I know you to be, I’ll end it. But,” you pause focusing on him. “You have to promise me to never do that again. I won’t be able to take it. And you’re worth way more than that.” He nods with resignation. 

“I’m sorry.” He says. 

“Don’t be.” You say. And you mean it. 

For a while you just sit, leaning on each other. Then he gets heavier with sleep. 

“Come on, let’s get you back to bed.” Helping him up, you realize that the sky was starting to lighten. Resolved, the two of you leave the dark alley, and the mess behind you. 

 

**Jake: Die Another Day**

When you wake up, you are happy to find yourself on the couch where he left you. It’s a weird feeling you think, not knowing where you’ll wake up, or even if you’ll wake up. It takes you a little while, because your head is unbelievably foggy, but you soon are aware enough to hear the sound of voices not far away.

“We need to just give it some time,” a low voice was saying “So we can figure out exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Are you crazy? What, did you even ask him what he thinks?” another voice asks in a whispered shout. 

“Look, this is complicated. Last night, we talked…” He says, leaving the thought uncompleted. Through the haze you begin to remember the alley. “I just think that giving up now would be wrong.” 

Clarity brings you awake, and you stare at the back of the couch as you listen. You should say something, but you’d feel too guilty intruding. 

“Dirk, I want him to get better as much as you do. But I’m also not blind, are you sure this isn’t just what you want?” Jane says, worry coming out in her voice. You hear her shuffle her feet, and then continue. “He told me about what you told him. You know he tells me all about your relationship?” 

“What did I say?” Dirk says, guardedly. His tone is level, but it doesn’t make you feel any less like you shouldn’t be here. Closing your eyes you will yourself to sleep. You wish Jane would stop, you wish you could deal with your feelings without blabbing about it with you friends so they couldn’t tangle them up like this. 

“He said, that you told him you need him more than he needed you. I’m glad you finally can see that.” She says. Even you can feel the sting, not needing to see Dirk’s reaction to hear the discomfort in his silence. “Look, I know you both. And Maybe I’m overstepping here, but I just don’t want to watch you push him to do something that he doesn’t want to do. Because it isn’t about a stupid tattoo, or clubbing, this is his life!” 

“You think I don’t know that?” He speaks up defensively. “You think I didn’t worry if I should have let him pull the trigger last night?” 

You swallow, feeling the air thicken in the room. 

“He tried to kill himself?” Jane says in disbelief. 

“Yeah, Jane. He did,” he says. You want desperately to disappear. “And I’m not telling you for any reason but to understand that he could have. But he didn’t. Don’t you think we should at least try to save him?” you can hear a wavering of desperation in his voice. 

“But what if we can’t?” she says, echoing your fears. “What if he does something horrible, what if he tries to eat us?” 

“He hasn’t so far.” He says. 

“It doesn’t mean he won’t.” she counters. 

“I know.” He says, finally acknowledging the danger. Then you hear him breathe in. “The first thing we need to do is try to find out if there’s a cure.” 

“How are we going to do that?” Jane says, “The power has been out for days, for all we know the rest of the country is in ashes too,” 

“I don’t know,” he says. You can hear him coming up with a plan. Pushing forward like he always does. “We should try to dig up information, maybe there are printed reports at the news stations.” 

Then he stops. “Please just, don’t give up on him.” 

Silently, you let the tears that had started fall from your nose. For the first time, you feel grateful. As messed up as all of this is, the fact that he won’t let this go means everything to you. This could be horrible, this could be the thing that kills you all, but for a moment you let yourself selfishly take hold of his belief in you. 

For a while neither say anything, as Jane considers. “Dirk?” she says. 

“Yeah?” He answers. 

“If it were me… or Roxy… would you try this hard to save us?” 

You listen intently, hearing Jane’s need in the silence. How much this is tearing her up hits you, and you admire her for defending you. Seeing Dirk fight so hard to keep you around is easy to understand when it’s someone he’s got a crush on. But if it had been anyone else? 

Dirk takes his time before answering, and you feel the tension in their friendship. He sighs at last, “…Yeah.” 

“Really? Would you?” she says intently. 

“If it were me would you give up?” He asks her, a crack betraying the sadness in his voice. 

“…I don’t know,” She says, relenting. Then she sniffs, in a spark of emotion you realize she’s crying. “I’m just scared.” 

“Me too,” Dirk says. 

You hear Jane let out a pitiful laugh. “Look at us. How did this happen to us?” 

Dirk sighs, “I have no idea.” 

They stay together for a minute in the kitchen, until you hear one of the cupboards open. “You want some cereal?” Dirk asks. 

“No.” Jane says, with a humorless laugh. “I’ll have cheerios.” 

With relief their conversation about you turns to other things, and you let the tension in your shoulders ease. You feel awful for eavesdropping on them like that. But at the same time, you didn’t see any way to interrupt them. What’s done is done, miraculously they don’t hate each other, or you, and that’s the best you could hope for. 

You breathe in, pretending to wake up. When you roll over both of them are watching you from the breakfast table. 

“How’d you sleep?” Dirk asks. 

You rub your eyes to act, but also to wipe away any tears. Now that you think about it, you didn’t dream at all. It was just a blank space between waking, and being jolted out of unconsciousness far from the couch. “Like a rock.” You mumble. “How long have you been awake?” 

He looks at Jane, who says, “Not long.” 

You push yourself upright, and have to shut your eyes to keep the room from spinning. Sitting up is your best contribution to joining the living, and you find your glasses on the arm of the couch. Just rising from the blankets makes you cold, you pull them around your shoulders and wonder how you made it all the way to the alley last night; soreness and fatigue make your muscles cry.

There’s a little commotion as Roxy makes her entrance as she usually does, half purposefully hanging on the doorframe, half nursing a hangover, somehow looking like she belonged in a flapper dress. Usually this is followed by some sarcastic comment about last night (“Frenchmen really do know how to kiss!”) but this morning as she was about to welcome the world her eyes find you on the couch. She’s visibly shaken, and you realize she must not have expected you to be there. It makes you look at your feet. 

The moment passes quickly, however, and she ruffles your hair as she passes. “Hey Jakey.” And then that’s it, everything’s back to normal. Rox joins Dirk and Jane at the square card table by intentionally mistaking Dirks lap for her chair. He tries feebly to push her off, but then just lets her lay there, spooning cheerios into his mouth over her stomach. This makes her giggle, and she tries to snatch his shades. At this he grabs his bowl and stands, dumping her on the floor. “Owwow” drifts from under the table, but she’s also laughing, so you know it’s no big deal. When her head reappears she seems to have forgotten it entirely. “You know what we should do? I used to know a great crepe place uptown. We should make crepes.” 

“Why crepes?” Dirk asks from where he stands, refusing to sit until the lap stealer picks a chair.

“Well, I mean, why not crepes? Jane, don’t you know how to make crepes? What do you think Jake, doesn’t today need crepes?”

Honestly you couldn’t care less what you did today. You just want them to be happy. “Sure yeah, why not. Crepes!” A hand lifts from the trap of blankets for dramatic effect. 

Dirk shrugs and that seems to settle it. Grand mission of the day, secure crepes. 

“Okay, but we’re only heading up that way because that’s where the news stations offices are located. I want to try and get a better idea of just exactly what happened, and how long we may be moving around.” He sets the emptied bowl by the sink out of habit.

The rest of the morning goes by quickly; the others take short showers, the first they’d had in days, and Jane helps you get cleaned up, redressing your arm while wearing gloves. Your head is still a little foggy, but all in all you feel like yourself, if a little congested in the chest, and strangely light around the stomach. By the time you’re all ready and on the road the sun is high, and you can’t help but feel a glimmer of hope.

 

**Dirk: Be Anxiously Engaged in a Cause to Save Jake**

The sunlight always seems to transform this city. In the early afternoons the tall glass windowed buildings reflects the blue stratosphere, turning your world into an ocean of sky. Without the mess of civilization, the congestion of the streets, and the shouts and chorus of barters and street performers and political protesters you’re aware of just how big it all is. Passing between the bank and the IT offices you can almost imagine what flying is like. If only.

Your group hobbles along, it’s been a good hour and a half, but you can tell it’s taken its toll on Jake. Through only sheer providence you haven’t met any of the undead yet. You hope your luck holds, you don’t know what you’d do if they mobbed. He’s having enough trouble keeping up a steady walk, you keep asking him how he’s doing, but he shoes you away each time. Roxy and Jane keep the mood light--for once Rox is close to sober--and so Jane keeps her going by remembering past shenanigans. Jake lets out a chuckle here and then, you can hear the undertone of sick beneath it. You have to hurry. The beginnings of a plan are taking form in your mind, but you don’t have any time to loose. Tension makes your teeth grind, you’re caught between wanting to run ahead and needing to stay with them. The sunlight glints off a reflection of your shades in the building aside, and you’re pleased to see your impatience doesn’t show. 

This continues for a little while longer, Roxy and Jane rehash the London incident from last year, during which Roxy ended up in the hotel room of a major CEO with only her underwear on (no foul play was involved, just a lot of whiskey and a long trip to find the bathroom) which has Jake laugh coughing with abandon. You peek back to see he’s got tears running down his face. A smile sneaks through your mask of indifference.

“Heeey, look, I think we broke Dirk with that one.” Roxy ribs you. Of course she saw it. She always does.

“Ha ha. You remember how I had to bail you out of jail? Not cool,” you throw back. A pink tongue shows you her thanks.

Something’s wrong. The fourth voice is missing. You look back to see Jake had stopped five paces back, blank stare holding the horizon captive. Trying not to alarm Rox and Jane you walk back to where he stands, and try to pull him along by the hand. He doesn’t respond.

“Dirk, is everything okay back there?” Jane asks. This makes you uncomfortable for reasons you don’t understand.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” What are you going to have to do, slap him? It probably isn’t the most prescribable tactic, so you hesitate. “He’s just… seizing again.” 

“Seizing! Dirk I thought you said he was okay to travel!” she stalks back to stand by your shoulder, Roxy following like an orbiting satellite. Jane has a way of scrutiny about her, a sharp look to her gaze that makes you want to stay on her good side. Not because you think she’ll do something to you if you do something bad, but you know she’ll be disappointed. Conveniently forgetting to mention seizing suddenly seems like something pretty stupid to do. 

Rubbing your neck you explain it happened last night, but he was fine. 

“Well aren’t you going to do something?” she demands.

“What’s wrong with Jake?” Roxy pipes in.

“I don’t know,” you decide to answer the latter. “I’m trying to figure it out.”

You reach out to wave a hand in front of his face. The unnatural stillness unnerves you, he isn’t breathing again. Carefully you place your hand on his chest, and are surprised by how cold he feels. Even standing in full sun you can tell beneath his shirt his skin is several degree’s colder than any of the rest of you. A frown pulls the corners of your mouth down. You can’t feel what you’re looking for. Changing positions, you place three fingers at his neck. You definitely can’t feel it. He doesn’t have a pulse. You shiver a little as the hair rises at your neck and you pull your hand back. What exactly is happening to him? Until this point you hadn’t given the actual mechanics of the plague much thought, hadn’t cared what the rest of humanity was feeling. How could something stop the whole pulmonary system and yet still move around?

Jane must have noticed the weight behind your silence. “Dirk, what’s wrong with him?” before you can answer he sucks in a gasp, and you all recoil a little. Jakes eyes focus, but something else is wrong. Ashen as the concrete beneath you he lurches to the side, and you realize you have to catch him before he hits the pavement.

“Whoa! Where are we going? The trash can? Okay here we go.” He holds on to you and together you hobble to the street side waste bin. Jane pats his back as he loses the contents of his stomach. You’re surprised he even has anything to heave. A peek into the garbage shows you what you don’t want to see. Red is enough said. 

When finished retching you settle with him on a bench. Roxy brings a bottle of water; he uses it to clean his face, and takes a few sips. “My leg went to sleep,” he says. As if that’s the only thing wrong with him. An exasperated snort shows you’re disapproval of the implied understatement. 

Trying to tread lightly you ask, “how’s your heart feeling?” 

This retrieves a look of shock, but he answers you anyway, “Uhh, kind of awful. It keeps skipping beats. …Racing, and then dropping speed in awkward jumps.” Jane and Roxy look between each other.

He catches their silence. “Guys, I understand if you don’t want to keep me around. I’m not going to make you watch me fall to pieces.” He shakes his head and looks through the bottom of his water bottle. “I don’t want to be a burden.” 

You think you’re going to have to have another pep rally when Jane steps in for you. 

“Jake we will never think of you as a burden!” she says, and Roxy nods. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to make it through this, but we are not ever going to just abandon you. Get that through your thick head.” She comes up to hug him, and Roxy follows to scoop you into it too. “We stick together.”

You watch as his eyes widen and then water with relief. He huffs, and says “We must all be crazy.” 

Roxy laughs and palms his head. “We wouldn’t know what to do without you!” she tells him. 

Quietly, under all the smothering support he says, “Thank you.” 

You let the moment last, gooey sentimentality and all, until you think your anxiety is going to make you explode. Pulling away, you help Jane help Jake up, and quickly realize that he needed support walking. You let him lean on your shoulder, and the four of you set off, the girls walking in front arms drawn, you and Jake behind, calling out directions. He does a good job toughing it out, but somewhere around the third hour you realize he’s fading. His steps continue, monotonous as ever, but his head hangs and his arm becomes dead weight around your shoulders. You don’t say anything, but let him drift from consciousness quietly. It makes the transition easier you think. Almost like falling asleep in the car. By the time he wakes up you’ll be at your destination, and this whole ordeal will be over. If only you knew exactly when and where that would be.

By the time the sun sets changing the sky to fire, you’ve made it about two thirds of the way to your destination, not having seen another soul living or dead the whole way. Another ground floor apartment sounds best, you’re unsure whether in this state Jake could handle stairs.

You lead him in by the hand—he follows like a sleepwalker—and carefully settle him on the couch. When you step back he looks so peaceful, the three of you leave him be while you find something to eat. Eventually its decided that you’ll all share the front room, Jane takes the second couch and throws Roxy a couple of couch cushions as a makeshift futon. When they’d settled you turned off the lights, and took your place as first watch, sentinel against the night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Dirk: Stand Watch and Think Too Much**

Watching them sleep that night is different somehow than the other times you’d been set to the task. You’re unbelievably tired, having been awake for thirty plus hours solid now hardly counting the hour and half nap you had that morning, it’s harder to keep yourself awake, sleep constantly nagging at your mind. More than once you catch yourself dozing, and have to employ measures to keep awake, by getting up to walk around, even quietly doing plyometrics in the corner. Once you feel suitably aware, you resume your post by the window, or in the way-too-comfortable-to-be-fair lazy boy. 

Listening to the sound of silence and breathing you feel it again, the difference to the night. At first you try to shake it, like the misty feeling of déjà vu, but persistently the change in mood hangs around your shoulders. You know there’s a name for it, but it eludes you like a playful shadow. It’s uncomfortable, you don’t want it, but at the same time it’s familiar, calling your mind to the past. Asleep they seem so vulnerable; Jane and Roxy were curled up and tense, dreaming barely veiled nightmares, and Jake, so still you could hardly even tell he was sleeping at all, sickness sounding through sighs so spread out you weren’t sure when his chest would rise again. Seeing them sleep makes you think of someone else, from years ago. Back then you’d felt the same, like you had to be better than you were, like you were the only thing standing between him and the rest of the world. Because you were. You were all he had. An example, a… a protector. Back before he decided to throw it all in your face like the little shit-head he was. You briefly wonder what he’s up to. Confidence within assures you he’s fine; he’s always been a resourceful little punk. But thinking about him brings the word to you, echoing out of the dark recesses of your memory: Responsibility. 

It leaves a weird taste in your mouth, that word. It seems out of place, in this context, turning the world you thought you knew on its head. You met Jake after your family had its fallout. At the time social contact had been poisonous, you only ventured out of your apartment to go to work, which changed it seemed on a weekly basis. Somehow he’d seen through your venomous exterior and befriended you, convincing management to let you stay at the sporting goods checkout for your first steady job in months. It still confuses you why he bothered at first, despite the fact that you were a natural mechanic, and had a habit of staying after hours to work on the broken equipment while no one was looking and indeed turned out to be a good addition to the team—you sure hadn’t acted like it then. The first time you’d met with him Roxy and Jane for lunch you’d acted like a jaded asshole, trying too hard to disguise the jealousy you’d felt. Really it’s a miracle they’d kept you around.

And here you were, suddenly responsible for the people who turned your life around. Responsible for lives that were in many ways more deserving of mercy than yours. Swallowing the tightness from your throat you’re angry at the unfairness of it all. The madness of the past two and a half weeks catches up with you, and weariness settles on your chest like a heavy animal. Has it really been that short? Counting the days on your hand backwards you realize it’s closer to twenty days since the infection hit critical mass. You train your eyes back on the window and try to pretend none of it exists.

You realize it’s quite a while later when you come to your senses to see Roxy sitting up. Shit, you forgot to wake her for next watch. You must jerk a little, because her eyes snap from where she was staring to fix on you briefly, bringing a wary finger to her lips before looking back at whatever had made her so unnerved. Blinking the sleep from your eyes you follow her gaze, and see Jake standing in the darkness. At first you’re confused as to why this would be unsettling, but as your mind focuses and you remember more you can see the awkward lines in the droops to his shoulders, the way his head hangs at an uncomfortable angle. You’re about to get up, but then he takes a step, almost cautious, hesitating, when you hear something clatter from the street outside. 

Now you’re awake. Disappointment at yourself for sleeping through the watch burns your throat. You need to get up and get Jane and assess the threat, but _you don’t know what to do with Jake_. Before you can decide a safe way to tackle him back onto the couch he seems to decide it’s a lovely time for a walk and with surprising speed and agility for a sleep-walking invalid, bolts out the door, which swings shut in his wake with a slam. 

_Shit shit shit shit_ , you think, you get up and fling yourself at the door, Roxy and Jane running to the window, Jane rubbing sleep from her eyes. The damn thing sticks, and frustration makes you throw your shoulder into the jammed door. The noise of the undead rises from outside, it raises the hairs on your neck and makes your hands slippery.

“Dirk come look at this--” Jane says shakily, disbelief coloring the breaks of her voice.

You curse the door and run to the window, panting. There’s a full mob gathered, you’d guess probably eight or nine, hunched ominously across the street, but despite their unearthly moans they remain still. You look sideways out the window, there he is, you hate to see the bent posture of the dead reflected in his own spine, standing between your door and them. Eyebrows creasing you struggle to understand, watching carefully as he takes a step forward, and growls back, a thick throaty noise that makes even you uneasy. The mob hesitates. Your nerves are on fire, you’d caught sight of zombies fighting before, vicious and rabid like dogs over scattered brains. Dread fills you as you realize what’s about to happen. Throat dry you can only watch captive as they stand off, Jake defensive as last night, the empty stares of the corpses boring through your friend. _Don’t_ you plead silently. _Just don’t. Just go away._

One of them charges, and then they all do, Jake included. You can’t watch this. You throw yourself back at the door, sweaty palms slipping at the handle, panic rising up your throat. Come on! Handle in a death grip you shake the door on its hinges, but it still refuses to move, pine sturdier than a bulwark. The sound of a rifle cocking makes you turn, and you see that Roxy has leveled the gun at the open window. 

“No!” grabbing the barrel you push it toward the ceiling. “You might shoot him!” 

“Get a grip Strider, I won’t even! Let go of my gun!” 

While you two struggle something happens outside. “Jake!” Jane’s voice stops your commotion and you look to see that the fight has frozen outside. Jake stands over a limp corpse, shoulders heaving; he breathes heavier than the rest of them, but it’s still slow. Some of the mob is hanging back, unsure, while the three largest stand opposite Jake, assessing the challenge. While you’re distracted Roxy takes aim and drops one of the zombies to the left. As if it was a trigger the action starts again, and this time you stand frozen by Jane with shock as you realize what’s happening. Zombies, while slow most of the time, had an unsettling way of moving with striking speed, as if not even thinking through the jerky spider moves their legs and arms made, relying instead upon reflexes and nerve relays. Jake was wild, despite taking fists and clawed hands to the face, he was holding his own, no he was beating the mob. Having discovered a broken neck would stop his enemies in their tracks he was surprisingly good at grabbing hair, ears, noses, whatever there was to hang on to and yanking their heads with brutality. When fringe fighters tried to sneak past to the door he would catch them by their shirts and pull them back to their end. Roxy didn’t get a chance to fire another shot, the fight was all over the place. And just as soon as it began, it was over. The stragglers were stumbling back to the darkness, Jake remaining victorious. Slowly Jane lowers her hands from over her eyes, and with a gulp you break the silence. “Holy Gog.”

One hundred percent done with the door you use your katana to cut through the deadbolt, and yank it open to run to him. “Jake!” he’s swaying slowly, but then he stands straight, and when you catch up to him he looks at you. Really looks at you. There’s a twitch of his lips, a smile? But then he cringes, a hand claws his hair and he falls into you with a moan. You catch him as he goes limp, struggling with the sudden deadweight. A proper look at him lets you know he’s a mess, more cuts and bruises to label him a biohazard better than a bucket of used needles. No more bite marks however, just the first one on his arm. 

“Rox, a little help?” you ask, trying to get a better handle around his shoulders. 

“Coming,” she calls, running up with elbow length rubber gloves. Eyeing them you feel a little nervous, you don’t think you have any recent scrapes on your arms. Looks like you’re going to be taking a bleach bath. She grabs his legs and together you get him back to the apartment. Closing the door, you lay him out on the floor, Jane Gasps. 

“Oh, Jake.” Muffled, a hand covers her mouth.

“Do you think we’re gonna have to move?” Roxy looks up at you.

Just trying to absorb the situation you look back at her blankly for a second before you realize what she asked. Thinking about it, you begin to shake your head, “no, I don’t think they’re coming back after that.” As you continue you become surer, “they’re sick and deranged, but they’ll respect the pile of mangled bodies out there. And if anything else heard or saw that, the stink of the dead should cover us up. They’re not coming back.”

That brought you to the next pressing issue: Jake. Skin pale in the thin filtered moonlight of the window, you can already see the spreading blotches of bruises and black eyes. Gog, he looks dead. Jane tries to dab at him with a cloth, cleaning up the cuts on his eyebrows and chin. He doesn’t move, comatose, arms and head hang limply. You go to put your head in your hands but stop and remember the virus, an invisible threat. A quick rummage through the closets and Roxy returns with a half-full gallon-sized jug of chlorine bleach. Using a cleaning bucket you wash your arms, and take off your shirt and soak it, using it to help Jane to clean up Jake. The bleach stings your eyes and nose, you decide that it’s why you’re eyes are watering. After a while you finish, but none of you are able to lay down, too riled up from the excitement. There’s a little shuffling when together you move him back to the couch, but then each of you are left listless, all talk taken out of you. Roxy stands next to the window rifle at the ready, Jane settles back on the couch, eyes wide watching Jake. You settle back into the sitting chair, and before you know it you’re asleep.

**Dirk: Follow the Plan**

In the morning you wake ready to go. You’re the first to eat breakfast, pounding down month old corn flakes you guys found at the back of one of the cupboards. Stretching it out to see how it dried, you realize your round neck t-shirt isn’t salvageable, so, you head upstairs bare-backed to scavenge through the closets. 

Skipping the girls wardrobe you search through the items of someone who you guess had to be about forty-five, who needed to be scolded on how many V-neck sweaters he was allowed to own at one time. Ugh so much argyle. You’re losing faith on being able to walk out of here with something to wear when at the back you find a few starched collared shirts that looked like they hadn’t been worn in at least a decade. You pick out a white one, because you’ll be mocked to the ends of the earth if choose pastels, and are pleased when it reflects an age when this man wore sizes smaller than XXL. You try it on, roll up the sleeves to take a peek in the mirror, and fuss around with your hair a bit. Hmm, collar popped you think.

When you return downstairs Roxy lets out a low whistle. “Woo, look who’s stylin’.”

You give her a blank stare of death.

“Seriously Dirk, you should dress up more often. Maybe try suits.” Jane tacks on. “I think they’d suit you.”

“Ohoho! Nice one!” They high five and you blatantly ignore them by strapping on your sword. 

“If you two are done, help me get this one up. We need to get going.” Standing over Jake you feel a little sorry for him, even in the daylight he looks terrible. Maybe if you could get his eyes open and get him to eat something he’ll get a little color back. You pat him gently on the cheek. “Come on sleeping beauty, time to get up.”

He doesn’t respond. Of course. You think he’s still breathing though, yep there he goes. Alive at least. Even if he doesn’t quite look it. The double black eyes really do give the feeling of undead thespian makeup. 

“Jake,” you say his name, this time shoving his shoulder. “Jake.” He just jostles and lays still. “Jake!” Maybe louder will help. “JAKE!” Nope, no response. You throw a pillow on him in exasperation. He still doesn’t move.

“Dirk, maybe we should just wait, let him sleep.” Jane calls from the sink as she sets her bowl in. “He’s probably pretty tired.”

Well that’s an understatement. You’re pretty sure you could blow a fog horn in here and he would snooze right through it. From where she was sitting propped cross legged in the lounge chair Roxy helps to express your mood, “le sigh.”

You try to wait five minutes. Okay, you wait a whole half an hour. By the time forty five minutes swings around you busy yourself repairing the lock on the front door. At an hour fifteen, it’s fixed. Hour twenty you break the silence.

“Okay, so I’m guessing he’s going to be taking a pretty big nap.” Jane and Roxy look up from the Women’s magazine they’d found under the couch. “Why don’t we leave him here, lock the door, and come back for him when we’ve finished? If we go without him we can travel quicker, and it shouldn’t take more than an hour to figure stuff out once we get there.” 

They look at each other. “I don’t know,” Jane says “We’ve never split up before. And it seems irresponsible to just leave him here alone. What if something happens?”

You cross your arms and look at them both. “Well the other option is to leave one of you here to watch him.” Judging by the look they give each other you were right in that they both had their own reasons for not wanting to be alone with Jake. You know he makes Roxy uneasy, but you bet Jane’s qualm is more about being able to defend herself on her own. “Look, he was more than a match for a whole mob last night, I’m sure he’ll be fine for a couple of hours. He probably won’t even wake up. But I can tell you the more time we waste here, the less chance we have of finding help for him before it’s too late.” 

Jane looks thoughtful. “Well, I guess if we’re quick it won’t be a big deal.” 

And with that the three of you set off, you’d found a key hidden in one of the kitchen drawers, and locked the door behind you. Making one last note of the apartment number you skirt around the carnage left over from last night and set the pace at a steady jog. 

***

Three blocks out you can see the radio tower rising off the Andrew building in the distance, a majestic structure that housed the major media stations including four news and radio stations for the region, and several early morning talk shows that would play in the background of the work day but nobody ever actually paid attention to. Now it stood empty, a dark silent shadow haunted by the echoes of a thousand voices. At the heart of uptown it stood taller than the other high rises around it, marking your destination like a beacon. You have to be careful now; the population concentration spikes with the vertical concrete, there could be an ambush waiting around every corner.

Luckily the streets are trashed, cars piled in accidents, doors hanging open from when their owners took their lives onto their feet, and they provide plenty of cover for you to dart inconspicuously through the carnage of metal and debris. Pause and wait at a taxi, jump and slide down the side of an ambulance, over the hood of a sedan. Kneel at the corner of an SUV to let Roxy and Jane catch up, sprint together in v formation across an intersection that had been cleared weeks ago by a sliding semi-truck, now lying like an injured behemoth under the traffic signals. Quiet feet, heel ball toe, don’t slap your shoes to the pavement, and move like a cat. You travel this way with speed and within another thirty minutes the base of the Gaudy Andrew stairs are visible, snarling wolves guarding on pedestals. Your spirits actually lift, but you realize it’s too soon when there’s movement from inside the cab of a minivan midway between you and your goal. Instantly you signal the girls to duck, and you peer around the headlights of a Lexus to see it. 

Damn. Well, can’t say you’re surprised. Green and black bruised legs poke out the ajar drivers’ side door, curled uncomfortably in the front seat. Taking a little more freedom of space you check carefully in the windows around you, but all the others are empty. It’s a loner. You draw your sword. Keeping you steps silent you sneak up on the van, prepared to eliminate the threat. Once you get closer, you get a better look at it. All knees and elbows, the emaciated form lies still unaware of your approach. It has remnants of long hair, most of which has been pulled out, and the faint suggestion of lines and curves and you realize she’s a girl. Pitiful, eyes closed her head cradled in the seatbelt and her chest rises and falls gently. Do zombies sleep? You have to open the door to be able to get a good swing, and you brace yourself for action. Deep breath, you rip the door out of the way and she reacts eyes flying open with terror, you swing your blade down diagonally, cutting through a scream that curdles your stomach. “NOO!--” it ends abruptly when you sever her windpipe. The body goes limp and you stagger backward, gasping. Your heart’s racing; Jane and Roxy grab you by the shoulders and pull you with them, stumbling toward the stairs. Getting your feet under control you run with them, shadows shifting on the edge of your vision, coming closer. It’s a race up the steps, at the door you shake the handles—locked. The sound of growls and bodies moving awkwardly through the mess in the streets is coming closer; you take a step back and kick the door. Kick again. The third time the lock brakes, and you scoop the girls inside, Roxy blows the closest one away while the rest struggle with the stairs. 

Once behind the doors you run to the security desk and grab the portable filing cabinet, and lug it in front of the doors. Roxy brings the chairs, and Jane helps you grab the desk. “What about the glass?” she asks as a dead palm slaps the door hard enough to shake.

“Bullet proof, they shouldn’t be able get in” you grab one of those leather chairs lined up against the wall and drag it with you, “As long as the door can’t budge.” Grunting you turn it on its side so the leather sticks to the tile creating negative friction against the oncoming force. A couple more of those and you’re almost convinced your words are truth.

Standing back the three of you face the line of undead and you clean your sword. They were moaning jaws slack, eyes blank and staring, hands against the windows a few feebly pry at the doors, thwarted by the force field of glass. One of them licks the window, and you shudder, closing your eyes to block it from your mind but instead end up replaying the seconds of panic when she screamed. It was necessary I had to do it, you tell the eyes looking up so scared, it’s better for you this way.

Running your hands through your hair you suck in a breath and exhale it in a long hissing sigh. “You gonna be okay?” Jane asks concern in her eyes.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Grateful for your shades, you turn your back on the vocal mob. Halfway down the grand entry there’s a directory, you train your eyes on it and force yourself to read the words. You run down the list of names, not really sure where to start. You’re not even sure just walking into any of these offices with help you find what you’re looking for. Logic tells you to get to the databases, to find the last reports, but before you do that you’ll need power. There must be a backup generator somewhere. Your feet take you back to the security station, and you bust the doorframe heading into the back room. Once inside you fish the flashlight out of your backpack, and switch it on. 

You’re glad to find that the room is empty. Lightweight chairs remain where they were when they were pushed away from the tables by men and women rising to action, perhaps to evacuate or pacify the patrons of their sky rise. Papers are strewn across all surfaces, health clearance forms and memos, now useless. On one wall diagrams of the buildings floor plan are spread out like atlases stapled to the tack board, highlighting escape routes, fire alarm systems, and bright orange lines defining emergency power circuits. Using your light you follow the lines through the layers of floors, folding up more and more posters heading down schematically through the structure. It looks like they’re in the basement, opposite to the boilers and water heaters. Halfway through the floors there’s also a relay, tucked behind the elevator shaft. You shuffle some of the papers around a bit, and find another listing of the directory, this one more detailed with sub offices lasting several pages. You flip through them and pick one that looks promising, CNN has both its own labs and IT department. Finding the numbers on the maps you see that it’s situated in the interior of the structure by the stairs on the seventeenth floor. A blue ball point pen lists the office numbers on your forearm, you put the directory into your pack, and one last look at the schematic you think you’re ready.

“Okay. Let’s go downstairs.” You head to where the plan leads, imprinted on your mind, not towards the stairs in the lobby which only head up, but for a back door out of the security office and into the maintenance hallways of the building. 

“Do you know where you’re going?” Jane and Roxy follow somewhat hesitantly, flashlights probing the shadows. 

“Yep.” The dark unadorned concrete hallways are narrow and ominous, you try to make your footsteps echo as little as possible following your mental map right, left and right again to the small door labeled stairs. They hurry after you hugging your stride against the darkness. Careful on the narrow stairs you emerge at the bottom pushing the crash bar open. Somehow just knowing you’re underground makes the basement darker. Maybe it’s the cold. Above your head water lines and power conduits squirrel away into the darkness. You re-orient yourself from the switchback on the stairs and after a second follow the power lines left. There’s absolutely nothing down here, the walls are clean, silence absolute, not even the dead ventures underground. Maybe they’re afraid of being buried. 

After you turn right at the corner of the structure you come to a set of double doors marked with electricity warnings and shock hazards of little stick figures dying horrible and painful deaths. Looks promising. You try the handle to find yet again, it’s locked. You’re getting tired of kicking down doors. Instead you point to Roxy and she takes the initiative to shoot the steel for you. Giving it a push it swings forward freely.

Inside this particular electrical closet you find a larger room filled to the brim of its low ceiling with wires, conduits, switch boxes and breakers, and toward the back a row of large circular generators spanning the wall. Everything is silent, dormant electronics dead to the rest of the world when they should be humming. It’s a little sad maybe, they look forlorn and forgotten. 

Pulling a panel off one of the generators you hand your flashlight to Jane. “Hold this.” She aims it patiently to where your hands work and fiddle with the wires. You find a couple frayed ends, and clean them up before connecting to the starter. When the machine doesn’t respond you frown for a minute, poking around at the small silicone board. You disconnect and reconnect a few of the miniature plugs, try to reposition some of the hardware, but it remains silent. After fifteen minutes you’re getting frustrated. You open another one. It looks much better than the other did at first, but it reveals no secrets. 

“What’s wrong with them?” Jane asks. What a useless question. She might as well ask what you’re thinking. You smile inside at your own impatience.

“I don’t know.” You step back. “They’re self-sustained generators, with a gas starter. There’s a mechanism inside that spins two circuits against each other, which after about five minutes can run indefinitely on centrifugal force. It’s genius, but relatively low yielding, which is why they’re not commonplace. I bet they were loaned out on a company contract from some big wig corporation in Silicon Valley to test them in the field. Something’s preventing it from starting…” a peek around the edges reveals that there was a small reservoir for starter fluid along the side. It’s empty. 

You check the other six, only one of them has any fluid in it, and carefully you relieve its generator of the small plastic jug, unscrewing the bolts while Roxy holds it steady. 

“Why can’t we just start this one?” She asks, being careful to not let her scarf touch any of the dusty surfaces that were so numerous. 

“Because,” you say reaching around her arm awkwardly to turn a bolt. “Each of these services a certain section of the building. This one doesn’t provide power where we’re going.” Remembering tracing the orange lines, you’re certain that the one you picked is the right one. With one last turn the bolt chimes on the floor, and you gently take the reservoir from Roxy.

You wish you had a funnel, but a quick look around the room shows you that it’s something you’ll have to do without. Taking a deep breath of anticipation you pour from bottle to bottle, the smell of ethanol striking your nose. Roxy sniffs. 

“Geez Dirk, I didn’t realize you were such a garage mechanic.” Her hand covers her nose. As the rest of the liquid drips into the reservoir you exhale, no spills.

“Okay. Cross your fingers.” You screw on the cap and move back to the panel, to press the ignition. 

“Is it gonna be lou—” Roxy breaks off as the generator roars to life, drowning out her scream. Standing back you spread your arms wide, like a conductor to a symphony. 

“It lives!” you can’t resist the reference, your Frankenstein running much more smoothly than a reanimate corpse ever would. Well, it isn’t really yours, and it’s just as well, you would have designed a few things differently. You really just woke it up. At first it’s loud and hitching, the central bearing gaining speed, but after a few minutes the parts blur, and the motor shifts down in speed. You wait to make sure that it isn’t going to have any more problems, and after the ignition shuts down you turn back to Rox and Jane as they take their hands from their ears. “Ready to go?”

They nod. You notice Jane is shaking a little, nerves raw from the noise. You lead the way back through the basement, the electric hum of the generator fades substantially when the door closes, and then disappears as you follow the hallway back to the stairs. Once you get up one floor you take the girls back out of the maintenance paths and into the main foyer, to the emergency stairwell on the other side. You see the zombies have dispersed; one of them is still lying by the doors face down, one hand on the glass. Without disturbing him you hold open the door to the stairs and follow the girls inside.

“How far up are we going?” Jane asks halfway up the first flight.

“Seventeen floors.” 

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

The climb is arduous; you have to stop at the twelfth floor to check the relay, poking your head out of the stairwell to check the halls. They’re empty, but the white walls show signs of non-life, handprints and smears of once-red now dark-brown. It makes you nervous. You didn’t think they’d be up this high, and while you didn’t want to say there were none in the building at all you were silently hoping. You’re quick, chop off the handle to the door and pull it open to see the metal boxes inside. Like you thought, they were switched on just fine, the conduit leading into and out of the relay transporting the humming energy from the generator to the floors over your head. 

As you close the door over the precious noise, you hear another door open down the hall. Walking backward to the stairs where Jane was waiting at the door, you watch the shadow blocking the light of the doorway. It doesn’t enter the hall before you’re back through the door, but you hear its door slam before the stairwell’s handle clicks. “Run,” they don’t need to be told. Not even careful about the noise they were making they sprint up the stairs, you’re up a flight and a half before the crash bar sounds its entrance to the stairwell. Gurgling breaths tell you how close it is, when you hear him behind you, you turn sword drawn and stab jamming it through its forehead. He stops mid lunge and stares blankly through your waist. “They warned you about stairs bro,” with a faint smile you kick the body off of your sword and it tumbles to the landing below. The three of you ascend the rest of the way unmolested.

***

When you find the office number which corresponds the one on your wrist you’re surprised how tired you are already. You haven’t even started doing the real work yet. The banks of computer towers stand silent before you, and displacing your glasses you rub your hands to your face. At least the lights in here work, you hate trying to fix things by flashlight.

Clapping your hands together, you sit at one of the monitors and push the power button on the corresponding desktop. The boot starts up normal, and soon you’re looking at a windows start screen. Of course they use this shit. It’s not your personal computer you tell yourself, it’s not like you have to fight with it for more than this moment. The good thing you guess is that as long as some jerk hasn’t already corrupted the system, then logging on will be cake. Fishing the black zip drive out of your backpack you plug it into the USB port, and watch as the program you wrote logs itself on. The desktop changes to a red abstract and you remove the zip from the port. 

“Right, one of you can get on this one, see if the internet is still working while I open some more.” Roxy takes your place in the chair. The process is repeated twice, and Roxy lets you know that the Wi-Fi is down. You should have known that. Your head hurts.

“Okay, well I guess we’re going to do this the hard way. We need to sift through all the networks logs on the days leading up to the outbreak. I think we’ll be able to find some direction in all of this mess if we can figure out how it started.” You pull up the windows search program and set the sorting to by date. In the search bar you type outbreak. It returns 1,258 results. This is going to take a while.

“What kind of things are we looking for?” Jane asks, similarly daunted by the numbers. 

You shake your head as you skim a death report. “I don’t know. Patterns of infection, geographical charts, names of pharmaceutical companies, anything that’s important looking.” You close the file on the pictures you already know too well.

For a while the sound of typing and scrolling is all you hear. Mostly what you find are panic and confusion, reports of rumors, nothing substantial. But using a paper to log the death toll and where the reports were coming from you think you’re starting to see a pattern. You excuse yourself for a minute, retrieve a map of North America out of one of the adjacent studios, and tack push pins to slips representing each report. The markers concentrate on the south east US, spreading outward like a blast zone. 

“Huh,” you hear Jane sound from over your shoulder, “this is weird.” 

You get up from the map to look over her shoulder. She’s looking at a short pure text document. “What is it?” 

“Maybe nothing. But I went back to a week before the initial reports, and found this short blip about something that happened at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s weird, I don’t know, you read it and tell me what you think.” Skimming the words you pick up what she’s talking about. It’s almost as if someone had written the report, and then it had been edited to take out all the important information. All it said was that the CDC was instituting a new protocols regarding employee security, and due to ‘recent incidents’ the hazard and research labs were to require more stringent access codes. You lean back. The CDC corresponds to the scatter map you’d drafted, its headquarters were right in the center of the dots.

“You couldn’t find what it was referring to?” she shakes her head.

“No, but I haven’t been looking for it for very long.”

“Maybe there’s a follow up report. What were you looking under when you found it?”

She shows you and you hop back onto your station. There’s the title of Jane’s report, scrolling up through your history you look carefully through walls of text for mentions of the CDC. Open a file, skim for the bold letters, move to the next one. At about the fourteenth you find something. 

It doesn’t seem related though. This is about CDC employed Dr. Uutela being recognized for their discovery of a new antibiotic or something. They were given an award during the WHO conference three weeks ago. She was supposed to present her research during the conference, but due to personal commitments she was unable to accept the award in person. You look over it again but there isn’t anything that looks connected. You close the file.

As you move through the dates towards the outbreak there isn’t anything else on the subject. You pass a few preliminary warnings, carefully shielded bold headlines designed not to create panic, just announcing the advisory for caution. There are a couple ‘debunked’ You Tube videos that show footage of sick people, some of it pretty graphic, reviewing it all makes you shake your head. It’s crazy how hard they tried to cover this up at first. 

After two days the official announcements came out for quarantine and evacuation. A zone with a radius of 200 miles covering Georgia and Alabama were sentenced to internal care, and a wider stripe of about 400 miles encircling it on all sides given the imperative to pack up two weeks of provisions and head for the hills. It was absolutely insane. Awful planning. No wonder the first three days was such a downward spiral.

Here the CDC re-entered the scene. Focusing your scrutiny on them for the first time you notice how much they had a role in this. For the first week they’re all over the news, both in good and bad light. The CDC is working on developing a vaccine. The CDC is working in concert with the Red Cross to provide help to those in the quarantine and evacuation zones. The CDC is issuing a supply donation pool for the hospitals behind the red tape. The CDC temporarily moves its headquarters to Washington DC. The CDC is advising a no contact policy between healthy people and the infected, masks should be worn, goggles are recommended. The CDC fails to provide a promised solution within the allotted time, there’s a lot a flack about that. There are rumors about the origin of the disease, along with swamp monsters and mutated corpses dug up post mortem, a few low level government politicians blame the CDC, claiming there’d been a compromise of their biohazard department. 

A few shining examples of human character come out too. The Director Dr. Frieden quietly moved residence out of the red and yellow zones, two days before the outbreak, claiming to have had no foreknowledge. Many of the most prestigious research workers and developers failed to report back to work after the WHO conference ended—granted the disease made its premier two days before the closing presentations. But there are a few good souls too. Dr. Uutela and a colleague Dr. Matthews are mentioned in the article about working on a vaccine. There’s a guild formed that entered the hot zone to treat the infected and collect samples. There’s a couple follow up blips about their progress before the silence falls. 

After eight days into the plague the reports end; your city had already been “evacuated”, being close to the safe zone plenty of people followed the directive given and left within the first few hours. The rest were trapped in the panic and traffic, and the virus consumed them faster than you think anybody expected. Whoever was left to broadcast the news that was coming in lasted as long as the power did. After that there’s nothing left to look through.

Leaning back you run your fingers through your hair. Everything’s so incomplete, sure there are fingers pointing here and there but no hard cold evidence of anything. Eyes tired you’re starting to feel desperate.  
“Have you guys seen this chick Uutela?” Roxy asks. 

“She’s been mentioned once or twice,” you think back. “Why, what about her?”

Rox clicks her mouse a couple of times, and then turns her monitor to you to show her screen split to a report with a photo of a gaunt white blonde woman and a folder full of files. “All of these mention her in some way. She’s been working on a team to create a vaccine; they’d been making some progress before the reports end. There are articles about her career in hazard research and pharmaceutical development. Some of this is really promising.” Nodding, you remember reading some of those. “Dirk, it isn’t much, but this one particularly I think you should look at. It’s the only article that mentions it and it’s only a couple lines, but it says she’s had success at treating early symptoms of the virus. I think maybe she’s our best hope.”

You roll your chair over to read the words yourself. Sure enough there they are. “Where’s the last place she was stationed?” Trying not to be preemptive you stifle the feeling in your chest. 

“The last one says she was working in a lab in Reston Virginia.” Her voice is hesitant, and for good reason. It’s a long way away. You look back at the map you’d stolen from the TV set next door. Texas to Virginia. It seems impossible, the distance is huge, and probably you’d guess close to 1,000 miles straight through the heart of the infection. You think about Jake. Remember the way he looked at you last night. Despite knowing the danger you close your eyes, and take a deep breath. 

“Jane, look up maps of highways between here and Virginia.” 

“Already got one.” Opening your eyes you see the steel in her look, and once again you’re impressed by the girls’ moxy. A little humbled, you get up to look at it between her and Roxy’s shoulders. “I think it’d be best to head north first, through little rock and Nashville, try and skirt the quarantine altogether. If we can find a car with a full tank of gas we’ll only have to fill it maybe twice to get there.” 

“Sounds good to me,” Hearing her conviction the lightness in your chest is returning. You have a plan. You can do this. “Alright, Rox, we’ll need the address of that lab, Jane, print out that map.”

“Okay Mr. Bossy Pants.” Roxy grabs a pen, and after a few clicks by Jane you hear the printer come alive in the corner of the lab.

“We’re going to Virginia.” 

***

Exiting down the hall you get a look out the windows for the first time and realize just how long you’ve been here. The sun is setting in an orange haze. Your gut clenches a little, suddenly nervous; you hadn’t meant to be away from him this long. Feet picking up the pace you hurry to the stairwell. 

You open the heavy steel door but quickly shut it again when you hear the sound of lots of muffled shuffling and irritated moaning. Standing with your back to the door you face Jane and Roxy, their faces echoing the surprise you feel. “The stairs are blocked,” you say stating the obvious. 

“What do we do now?” Jane asks the air.

You shrug. Reluctantly you suppose you could charge down there and fight your way out, but at this time of day that just sounds like a lot of work and time, you’re tired and you don’t want to risk it.

“What about the elevators?” Roxy puts in. “We could do that thing they do in movies where they cut the cable.”

“Okay, even if it is stopped at our floor, that’s an incredibly stupid idea that at this height would end in a dark and horribly painful death. No thanks.”

“Fine, smart ass! Do you have any better ideas?” she throws back at you, and you consider it. Looking back out the window the building across the way is covered in scaffolding, its exterior in the process of remodeling before the work force disappeared. Getting closer to the window you can see at an angle the face of the wall stretching out below you, sheer concrete interrupted by straight wide ledges, and the hook of a crane extended out into the street between the high rises. At the corner of the Andrew there’s a section that was receiving similar cosmetic treatment, and steel scaffolding wrapped around its edge. 

“Follow me.” You lead the way further down the hall, and turn when it leads away from the windows farther into the interior of the structure. Counting the doors you get to where the hall ends and let yourself into the last. It’s a secretarial office, with a side waiting room and a window with a view of steel beams and pine boards. You grab a chair and throw it with all your strength at the glass. It shatters; Jane lets out a little yelp while the chair tumbles on the scaffolding for a minute, and then plunges into the street below. 

“Dirk have you lost your mind?!” she shouts at you. Looking up out the window you can feel the wind in your face, smell the fresh air. It’s invigorating.

Climbing onto the ledge you step out onto the boards, testing them at first, once you’re sure they’re safe you help Roxy onto the ledge. “You two can’t be serious,” you hear Jane complain from behind you.

Putting every ounce of cold I’m serious as shit into your voice you tell her “I’m going to need you to hold onto Roxy, and one of these beams. Roxy, I’m going to pass something down to you, kneel down and hold on to it and keep the bottom as still as possible.” With that you start to climb. Once you get up about four levels you see what there is to find. Some of these boards are more than twelve feet long; looking out to the hanging crane cable you judge the distance. You can make it. It’s been a while since you’ve had a chance to test some sweet stunts, and you briefly wish you still had your skateboard. Lowering one of the pine boards down to Roxy, you yell down “got it?” 

“Yeah!” she shouts back over the wind. 

“Good, let go of it when I tell you to.”

“WHAT?” she yells, but you already have a foot on it, pushing out into the void. Momentarily you laugh to yourself, cutting an elevator cable is about as safe as what you’re doing. The cable comes closer, you ride the top edge of the board balancing precariously on the verge and reach out. The thick cable hits your fingers, and you grasp it, swinging off the plank. “Drop it!”  
You watch as the board falls to the street below. Then, you change your focus, and with effort begin to climb the cable. 

**John: Return Home With the Spoils of War.**

The streets are fairly quiet this evening you think, as you exit the service door of the hotel you’d just been looting. Swinging your backpack over your shoulder you holster your trusty sledgehammer into the loop in you jeans. Relishing the freedom and silence you start to head back home. 

It seems weird that you’d been away already for, what, three hours? A quick check of your fathers leather watch reveals that it has indeed been that long. Weird. Time flies when you’re on a raid. And when you take a minute to pass out on comfy king sized hotel mattresses. When all of you are together they never let you screw around as much as you want to. You can’t count all the times they’ve told you your ideas are dumb. 

Thinking back you’re surprised that he’d let you just leave so easily. All you’d had to do was ask. “Dave, can I go out on my own to look for some food that doesn’t totally suck?”

“Sure whatever man, do whatever you want. Just don’t do something stupid that’s gonna get you killed.” He’d said, not even looking up from the paper he’d been writing on. A poem or something. Raps of ironies. You’re sure you’ll be hearing some of it later.

“Dave.” Stopping at the door you got his attention. “Will you cry at my funeral?”

“John, the tears I will shed at your non-existent post-apocalyptic graveside will make the angels in heaven cry. All the dead will rise in salute, and your zombie corpse will be blinded by the mere sight of my majesty.”

“Good.”

Three hours later you’d thought you’d gotten good loot; there’d been fresh milk not yet past the expiration date in the Hotel’s kitchens, and some bananas that were still good. Along with some cans and things you were sure Jade and Rose could make into something. That’s what girls did, right? Cook and be domestic. You’re not really sure but that sounds right.

Suddenly glass falls in the street ahead of you, and it’s followed by an office chair that collapses on impact. You freeze in your tracks. Craning your head you look up, and hear faintly someone screaming somewhere among the mess of scaffolding. It sounds like they’re distressed, but you can’t really make out what they’re saying. The shock of the matter is so profound that you don’t even fully comprehend what is happening.

You watch dumbfounded as a figure climbs up the side, and then rides a piece of the scaffold out into the space between the buildings. There are others, like you? Non-zombies? Is he trying to kill himself? Coming to your senses, you jump out of the way as the board comes down to greet the earth. Once the dust settles you run out into the middle of the street, all caution forgotten. 

“HEY!” throwing off your blue hood you wave your arms wildly. “HEY PEOPLE UP THERE! HI!” 

Two heads poke out of the iron and wood to silhouette against the sky. The guy who’d jumped to the crane pauses in his rope climb. You wave harder. There’s some sort of communication between them, and you watch as James Bond continues his way up to the metal frame of the construction crane and then to the cab of the beast. There’s a distant roar, and trilling whine, not unlike a reversing service truck. The hook of the crane makes its way smoothly to where the two figures stood, pausing while they stood into the crook and grasped the cable, and slowly brought them closer to the ground. Smiling wide you watch enchanted: these guys are really cool.

As they get lower out of the glare of the sun you can see its two girls. You blush and wave, the one with darker hair waves back. The hook doesn’t come all the way to the ground; instead it carries them to the other buildings’ scaffolding, before becoming dormant. 

“Hi!” you call again, running closer to where they stood above your head, stepping off the crane’s hook. “How’s it going?” 

They look at each other. The one with the scarf calls back, “Good, how are you?”

“Great!” you laugh, this is just blowing you away. “That was quite the stunt there, do you do that professionally?” Innocence is your middle name.

“Haha that was all Dirk,” she calls back “He’s nuts.” 

You frown a second, but then notice the lithe figure making his way down through the crane’s support. Jealousy hits you and your jaw drops in awe at the stunts executed with practiced agility. Swinging from one pole he slides down two beams like they were the edges of a ladder, then he jumps smoothly, feet grinding down a diagonal support to hop and land next to the girls. The cold glare he gives you from behind lethal triangle shades shuts you up quick. 

“What’s your name kid?” he asks, all business. You resent the pronoun kid. He’s probably like what, three years older than you? 

“John.” You answer back. 

“Hi John. It’s been great. But we need to get going.” And with that he turns to stalk down the scaffold away from you. 

“Wait where are you going?” you run after them, not taking the hint.

“Back to where we came from. Look kid, you can’t come with us.” He drops easily down the iron beams, and lands behind the twelve foot wire fence that separates you. He continues to walk away into the shadows. 

You will not be deterred. “If I can’t come with you, maybe, you guys would wanna come back to my place? I’ve got a couple others with me. We could join together!” the excitement in your voice elicits looks of pity from the girls. They follow the cool jerk down more slowly, and pause to look at his receding back. The girl with short dark hair who waved gives you a sad look.

“John, we really can’t. I’m sorry.” And with that they jog to catch up with their leader, and disappear around the corner of the crane’s support. 

Frowning, you wait until they you’re sure they can’t hear you anymore, and then after a little hesitation you decide to follow them. Yeah it’s twilight, yeah you’ll probably catch an earful of it from Jade when you get back, but you found people. It’s too incredible to pass up. Scaling the fence like a gust of wind, you land lightly on the other side and hurry on tiptoe to catch up with your quarry.

They lead you through the city farther than you’ve ever been away from your hideout before, and you’re starting to question the wisdom in this venture. But just as you’re about to give up and turn back, they make their way around a gruesome pile of dead bodies and walk into an apartment. You eye the zombies lying in the street. They did that? Your respect just keeps climbing where this group is concerned. 

There’s a little commotion from within the apartment and you duck back into an alley to watch. “Where is he?!” you hear someone shout. It sounds like Mr. pointy shades. What was his name? Dirk? What a jerk. Jerky Dirk. Muffled conversation reaches you but it’s hard to make out. Then you see him come back out of the apartment, standing in the street, looking around wildly. The dark haired girl follows him out. “Was the door locked when you opened it?” she asks arms folded. He pauses, looking back at her and then slowly shakes his head. “I don’t think so? But how would he unlock it…?” he trails off, genuine concern coloring his voice. They stand silent looking at each other for a little bit. Turning he cups his hands to his mouth and shouts “JAKE!” the desperation in it makes you reconsider your judgment. 

He waits for a little bit, the world is silent. “JAAAKE!” he calls again, your heart hurts. Okay, maybe he isn’t such a jerk. “JAAAKE.” She puts an arm on his shoulder.

“Dirk stop, something will come after us. Let’s… I don’t know , wait until morning, he can’t have gone far.” 

“And what, leave him alone out here over night?!”

“Should we risk the same? You said yourself he can handle it. Maybe…” she trails off.

“Maybe what.” 

“Maybe this is for the best.”

“You’re just going to let him go? After everything that’s happened? After he saved all of our asses last night? Just like that?” she doesn’t say anything, just looks hurt.

You’re beginning to become uncomfortable; this isn’t something you should be watching. You decide to turn around and head back. Climbing around the debris of the alley you exit at the next street and begin to make your way to the other side of town. In the distance behind you hear him yell again, the name echoing in your ears. You don’t want that kind of heartbreaking panic to ever happen to you, and you remember that your friends are waiting. Jogging you make it half way up the street when a form tumbles out of an alley to your left. It isn’t living, the eyes stare through you for a second and your heart beats in your chest, hand twitching next to your hammer. It begins to take steps toward you, but then the call echoes again and it stops. You try not to breath and grip the handle to your weapon. As if changing its mind, it turns and heads down the street toward the noise. You feel a little bit of conflict, knowing that they have a zombie headed their way, but you remember the pile of bodies and rude look Dirk gave you telling you to get lost. They could handle themselves. It’s more than high time you get back.

You run to make the distance grow faster.

**Dirk: Your Life Might Just be Over.**

After the fifth call you’re beginning to feel hopeless. You’d lost him. You’d made a promise and you broke it. Jane stands resigned at your shoulder. Somehow you feel like you’ve failed her and Roxy too. The thought makes you sick. 

Raising your hands you suck in to shout again when something turns the corner down the street. You squint. In the half-light it’s hard to see, to be sure, especially since your vision is tinted all the more, but could it be? The form trots awkwardly toward you two, Jane is tense. “Jake?” you venture. It keeps coming, beginning to gallop like an awkward lemur. Your hand drifts to the handle of your sword, but then you can see the silhouette clearly, the spike to his hair, the rounded shoulders and collared shirt. 

“Jake!” he slows down and comes to a stop before you, you notice his knees are scuffed and shirt dirty, as if he’d been climbing through debris. Unsure what to do you measure him, head craned uncomfortably he looks blankly over your shoulder, his posture is terrible and altogether limp, his skin pale and blotchy with bruises, but somehow it’s him. He’s still yours. Shaky with relief you grab him into a hug. He stands and takes it, and then rattles off a long and heavy sigh. _What, was that relief?_ You wonder. “Ugh man, you scared the crap out of me. Don’t ever do that again.” Another sigh. “Yeah I’m sorry for leaving.” You stand back and look at him holding him by the shoulders. “We’re not going away again okay?” you slap his arm, and turning you pull him by the hand Jane scooping the two of you back into the apartment, Roxy closing the door after you.

He came back. Everything’s going to be okay. 

He came back


	4. Chapter 4

**Dave: Write Something Too Cool To Mention In The Story.**

The door makes a soft squeak as it swings open and then clicks shut. 

“You were gone a long time. I was beginning to think you’d fallen down a well or something and I’d have to put on a red handkerchief and come save you.” 

“Hahah,” he huffs out breathless from running. “The first lassie with sunglasses. Plus, wasn’t she a girl? Rose would have to wear it not you.”

“Only if it’s purple,” she calls out from the other room.

He drops his backpack in a heap and comes heavy footed across the room to crash on the couch across from your chair. It practically is yours at this point, you’re sitting across the arms like a permanent fixture, it’s been a week at least since the last time the group had moved apartments. This one was a gem. Early in the apocalypse there had been a fire in the building that cleared out two floors below it. The stairs were gone, making it completely inaccessible from below. John had crawled up the drain piping you’d reinforced shortly after finding it, before entering the corridor that led to the three room apartment. A couple days later you’d figured out how to run an extension cord from the window a few feet to the building adjacent where the power was still miraculously running, and by night you lived by a couple of industrial extension lights pilfered from a construction site. Not the best, but it worked. When you wanted to cook something it was an easy hop through the two building’s windows to the stove. Long term plans aside, it served as a good hideout.

In the deep shadows of the white light you look up from the notebook you’d been passing the time writing useless junk in, and scrutinize your friend. His hair is a little messier than usual almost like he’d fallen asleep somewhere and left one side flat. The knees of his jeans were brown, and some additional scuff marks were noticeable. “Dude we need to find a shower that works. What were you running from an army out there?”

“Why do I smell bad?” he lifts and arm and then gives a sniff self-consciously, but turns away quickly to hide a gag. “Ugh. No I did find some good stuff though. Bananas, a few cans of soup and junk, plus some milk.”

“MILK?? Where?” Jade swings around the doorframe from the bedroom.

“It’s in my bag.” He gestures over his shoulder at the crumpled backpack that was still on the floor. She hurries over to unzip it and surgically remove the precious carton with surprisingly gentle hands for a frantic milk baron. She then goes through the other door where you can see Rose seated at the modest table in the kitchen look up from her knitting as Jade pours herself a measured glass. She finishes and gasps in accented delight “the things you miss during a zombie apocalypse.”

You train your eyes back on John. “So you didn’t have any trouble at all?”

He starts to fish out his headphones from inside his hoodie. “Jeez Dave if I didn’t know better I’d think you were actually worried about me.” He lies down sideways and scrolls through the music on his mp3 player without looking up.

You snort. “Only because I know you and the absurd shit storms of trouble that follow you. No zombie attacks? No wild mobs of survivor lord of the flies? Not even some weird blue aliens? That’s almost too good to be true.”

“The blue aliens would have been cool. Do you think Neytiri would be a zombie?” he throws back.

“She’d still have the same unnerving aim even as an undead blue goddess. Bam, John kabob.”

“Ouch.”

“Whatever man.”

You let his resistance go and the conversation falls into silence. Absently your focus falls back to what you were writing. It’s utterly useless, but you continue to try to rescue this project. What rhymes with parsnip? And also makes sense… you make a list of possible options but think that you’ve been thinking about it too long and it’s about time to do something else entirely. You tear off the page and throw it crumpled across the room and start sketching. You don’t really have any direction, but after a while Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff appear as zombies and start some asinine soccer match against a gorilla. You’re some way into this when he interrupts you.

“Where is this going?”

You look up at John and wonder for a second if he could see what you were doodling from way over there. Jade and Rose have similarly roused looks. He looks over the couch at them and then turns back to make eye contact with you. “What are we doing here? You know? What’s the point of all this?”

You shrug your shoulders at him. You don’t have an answer, why he holding you ransom like this? 

“We’re surviving John. We have it so life doesn’t suck in the meantime.” Rose calls from the kitchen, attempting to fill the uncomfortable void.

“Yeah but why? What’s the point?” Nobody answers. He sits up a little. “What are we going to do when the power finally goes out? We found a haven, but it won’t last very long. What happens when we run out of food? You know I haven’t seen a single plane in the sky for weeks. Nobody is going to come and rescue us. So what are we doing here?”

“I don’t know man, it’s not like anyone’s making us stay here. But where else are we going to go? We don’t even know if the rest of the world isn’t filled with zombies. For all we know there isn’t anywhere else to go.” You grip the pen in your hands and click the ball a few times, thinking. “What brought on this philosophical inquisition anyway?”

He hesitates seeming to consider sharing what’s in his head. That isn’t really characteristic of him, thinking before blabbing some weird story. Finally he breaths in and says “I talked to a group of others. Normal people. They’re on the move, going somewhere. I just am so tired of sitting around with nothing to do! We need to be doing something, like them.”

“Wait what? You talked to other people?” Rose starts.

“What were they like? Were they nice?” Jade throws in.

“Yeah, you’re going to give a more detailed explanation than that.” You finish.

Rose and Jade hop up and come in from the kitchen, Jade bringing a box of crackers. You snag a couple from the box as she passes by and then settles cross legged on the floor. Rose is perched on the arm of the couch opposite John, and he smiles as he sets into his story.

“It wasn’t a long conversation, but I was coming out of the Marriott four blocks down when it happened. They were in one of the sky scrapers, but had somehow gotten stranded way up high. I only noticed because they almost threw a folding chair on my head—”

“Were they aiming for you?” Rose cut in. That’d be a twist.

“No, I don’t think they knew that I was there.” 

You listen as the story goes on, noticing how there was a new light in Jade’s eyes, and Rose was acting more interested in this than anything in days. John was his goofy old self, throwing in hand gestures and expressing his reactions in movie quotes. Just knowing that you weren’t alone changed everything. You check back into the story at a crucial detail.

“Wait, he had pointy shades?”

“Yeah like triangles.” 

“Did you catch his name?” There’s a tight knot in your chest.

“Uhh it was really different. Dink maybe? Or was it Dirk?”

“Shit.” Your shift in gaze to the left shows your resignation. There’s little chance that there were many people in Texas that special order triangle shades, but hearing his name shot away any shadow of doubt.

“What, do you know him?”

Know him? It’s hard to hide. Maybe you could get away with playing it off. But the reaction to deny it was pointless now; the world was over, no more reputation to protect. “He’s my Bro.”

“Like, Bro you used to be friends, or real brother?” Rose asked, eyebrow raised.

“Real brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother!” Jade throws in.

“Yeah I don’t talk about it much,” Trying to leave a hint.

“You’re kidding!” John plows forward, oblivious to your sensitivity. “He’s Bro? Man no wonder you don’t talk about him anymore! He’s way more of a jerk than you said. He called me kid!”

You wince. “It’s been a long time. And to be fair you are snot nosed a lot of the time.”

“Hey!”

“Dave, your brother is alive. That’s amazing!” Jade cuts him off, full of enthusiasm. Is it? You wonder. You admit it’s pretty exciting that he’s apparently still flying around in all his crazy nutcase manner, but it’s all so complicated you wish that his and John’s path hadn’t crossed. Secretly you’d hoped he’d skipped town years ago, but every few months there would be a moment, a breeze where there shouldn’t be, disappearing shadows, that you knew he was checking up on you. Resentment bites, he could never leave you alone, even after you left. Jade’s voice cuts through the thought “isn’t that a good thing?”

“I don’t really want to talk about him.” You say, being overt now. Rose just raises the other eyebrow. You can only imagine what she’s imagining. 

“Dave, he has a plan. You can just tell. We should go find him!” John confronts you.

“John I don’t want to talk about my bro!”

“Why?!”

“JUST ‘CAUSE, OKAY?” 

The anger in your chest is surprising, as much a startle to you as it is to your friends. You don’t break his gaze though; this is something you won’t back down from. It was a door you shut a long time ago. You can tell John doesn’t get it, his eyebrows are knotted together and he huffs a little before looking away. The silence stretches on, uncomfortable now, and none of you seem to know what to say. After a while Rose looks up.

“What’s that noise?”

“What noise?” John asks, curiosity steering him away from the topic of Bro Strider.

“listen.” She says. You try hard to focus, and think you know what she’s talking about. There’s a low thrum growing in the air, almost like a drum beat but faster. As it strengthens John gets up to look out the window and Jade and Rose follow. Interest getting the better of your sulk your feet follow them to peer between John’s shoulder and Rose’s head. The sound is loud now, and familiar, though the silence of the last few weeks makes it seem fantastic and ridiculous at the same time. But then the black beetle shape curves around the buildings that obstruct your view, almost invisible in the velvet blue but for the blinking lights on its belly, and you can’t quite believe your eyes.

“Is that a helicopter?” you ask.

“It sure looks like a helicopter,” Jade answers.

“No way,” You say, not really to anyone.

“Way.” John says. You snort, but it’s Rose that corrects him “At least make an attempt to use correct grammar, please? Nineties slang is just slimy John.”

The black shape makes a couple circles, increasingly closer to your block, going in and out of view, but then after a pausing hover, it adjusts its course and accelerates to the north. After a short while the thrum of the blades fades to the point of memory.

“Huh.” You huff. “That was weird.” You back away from the window but continue to watch the stars outside.

“Maybe someone out there is planning on rescuing people here!” Jade says turning around and giving a little hop. “And then we could stop being crazy and angsty and be friends again!”

“We can only hope” Rose says, following her with a soft smile, and you catch her eye contact for a second. “This alpha male thing is getting weird.”

Wow. You shake your head a little. “What? Oh my gall Rose, I figured you were psycho analyzing me but really? Who said I want to be an alpha anything?” 

“Who needs words when you play the part so well? Telling John where to go, what to do, what we can and can’t talk about, and we all just accept it. I suppose that makes it partly our fault, we practically just gave you the key to our civil relationship. Laid down and let you walk in the house, throw down the bear rug and crash in your man chair.” She grabs a cracker from the box on the ground and looks at you mischievously. It’s the same light that was there during the chess match you had the second night. You’d tried to win, but she’d had you after the second move. The rest was cat and mouse. You hate playing games with Rose. 

“This is ridiculous. I hate bear rugs. What am I, some canned hunter? The least you could do is get your characterization right.”

“Sure it’s haughty, but we both know that the symbolism is accurate. You didn’t even counter my argument.” The smile grows tighter. Checkmate it says.

“Ha ha. That just means you get to be my African huntress queen. Bow down and worship your superior like you’re supposed to.”

“As long as I get to keep my cat.”

“You know, I wasn’t even the one who started this whole thing. I was all for just holing up in my place, making records that in a few years would sell for rubies. But what did everyone say? ‘Oh! Let’s go to Dave’s place!’” You turn and open your hands wide in a half curtsey “You ma’am are free to leave at any time.” 

“Ooh Dave, you don’t have to act so disaffected.” Rose pouts a little, but there’s no sincerity in it, only sarcasm.

“Who knows, maybe one of these days I’m just going to do a royal backflip off the handle and go myself. Then you won’t have to worry about any oppression.”

“But then who would play out my Freudian scenarios? It just wouldn’t work.”

“Use John, I’m sure he’s game.”

“What?” he calls, still looking out the window.

“You’re Rose’s puppet, man. Just remember that I told you when you find the strings.” He barely even reacts, a sideways grimace and a shrug is all you get.

“No you’re not John. You’d never get the subscript.” Man, she is just not giving up. But continuing this argument is losing its appeal. Time for wild accusations.

“Speaking of subscript, I think your wanting to keep a cat is an inexcusable violation of the masculine hunter ideal, negating your accusation. Or, OR! Maybe your confession of the title ‘Alpha Male’ was a Freudian slip itself. Admit it. You’re into me.” You cross your arms, indicating that you’re done.

“I think the funniest thing about all of this is you’re probably joking, but I really can’t tell.” Jade pipes in from where she stands across the room, in all her innocence like a little child caught in the middle of a domestic dispute. The smile on her face completely diffuses the sarcasm battle. You let your arms fall and concede the line to return to your chair, victory worthless.

“There he goes, to claim his throne.”

“I can’t hear you.” You say, falling backward over the arm again.

“All hail the alpha male!”

“Rose no one is laughing. You’re not funny.” You grab the notepad and pen, angling the pad into the light. Maybe if you just ignore her she’ll go away. Usually when she gets this way on chat you start writing a terrible rap and she stops, but that doesn’t really translate to verbal conversation. 

What a shame.

“Come on Jade, we should go make offerings of our loyalty for our supreme ruler.” As long as it gets her to leave the room, you guess that’s fine.

“Are we going to knit some more?” Rose links her arm around Jade on the way to the kitchen.

“You read my mind!” Good. They’re gone. Sheesh. Sometimes you don’t get a break.

There’s some hushed whispering going on in the background and momentarily you wonder what horrid thing they’re concocting. It better not be another tentacled cat clown. This one won’t last. There’s a certain long sword with its name on it, no matter how much Rose thinks it fulfills some kind of irony. She has no idea.

There’s a pause and you settle down into writing again, when someone sits on the couch next to you. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I think we need to meet up with your bro.”

You grit your teeth. Why can’t they understand that just the idea of such an occurrence makes your stomach turn? They’re going to give you ulcers. “John gogdangit, no.”

“Why are you so against the idea? Sure he’s a prick but we haven’t met anyone else out here. And we’re going nowhere. Why won’t you even talk to him?”

“Dammit! You’re your own person John. Go if you want to! All of you can! Meet up with him and have a stupid martini party. But I will not go. I can’t go. It’s not going to happen for me. The end. Stop asking.”

“I think you’re over reacting.”

“I think it’s none of your damn business.”

“Dave we won’t leave you behind. But I feel strongly that we need to follow them.” He breaths in. “We have to get out of here. Or we never will.”

You look at him. Crap. He’s got that stupid sincere look on his face, more murderous to resolve than puppy eyes. This time it’s you that looks away.

“So we’re talking about feelings now.”

He doesn’t say anything, ignoring the barb.

“Of course we need to leave here eventually. I get that. But we don’t have to follow Dirk to find our way out of this mess.” Thinking about it a direction does come to mind. “What about that chopper? We could follow its course northward. Likely if we go far enough in any direction it will lead away from the infection. But it came from the north. Normal people who are not zombies and skilled enough to fly helicopters live in the north. Why not go there?”

After looking to the window again he softens, the compromise seems to satisfy him. “Yeah. We should do that. We’ll probably also need to stock up for a couple of days, to make sure we don’t run out of food.”

“What’s that we hear? A plan to leave the Haven?” Rose calls from the kitchen. “We should get some more ammo for Jade while we’re at it, so we don’t run out of rifle.”

They’re all so ready for this. Maybe you should have seen it earlier. But something still seems unsaid, John conceded too quickly. There isn’t anything you can do about his decisions, but it still leaves you wary. “John.” He looks at you from the distant place he was traveling to in his head. “Just… don’t do anything stupid that’s going to get you killed. Because that really would be tragic.”

He smirks. “I’ll try.”

**Dirk: Remember Why You Hate Dreams.**

Sunlight burns through your shades, blinding you for a split second. It makes you squint your eyes shut, a reflex against the shock of pain. Slowly, blinking tears, you ease them open, one millimeter at a time, to see that the world isn’t made of pure fire. Blue sky spreads out through your vision’s triangular tint, and grass waves gracefully outside the edges of the opaque glass. It bends in from all sides, and you realize you’re lying down.

In the distance you can hear a familiar laugh, and for the first time it occurs to you to sit up. Rising out of the yellow stalks, you see three familiar figures, standing a ways away in the waist high grass. They turn and spot your hiding place, and wave, beckoning. You blink. They’re happy, but then you pause to wonder why they wouldn’t be. Standing together smiling as if sharing a good joke you consider them; the sunlight so bright it creates little halos as it shines off hair, clothes seem saturated with color, surrealism bleeding from white teeth and clean faces. Whispering like the wind, the feeling of disbelief sounds through your ears, like a forgotten secret. The vision is sweet, but like licorice it leaves a bitter residue, suggesting a familiar sense of self deception. Yet at the same time you push the notion away, wanting with all your heart for the happy crease lines below their eyes and healthy glow in their cheeks to be genuine. You can’t remember why you thought they could ever be any different.

He waves at you again, and this time you go over to meet them. It’s hard to tell if the distance is great or small, your steps take you to them through the eternal field, but when you get there you can’t remember if the steps took seconds or minutes. Feet meeting the edge of a blue and pink checkered blanket they stop their endless march—or maybe it was fleeting? Consumed with thought, it takes a moment to understand that they’d asked you a question. “What kind of fruit do you want?” Looking down, you see a basket laid out between them. Kneeling you take from it, one in each hand, round and generic, you don’t trouble yourself wondering what they were, pears maybe, and take a bite. As if it’s a major discovery you find you’re starving, and devour them both. Still licking your fingers, you look up. Something’s wrong. They lean back from you, gathering together across the blanket. “You don’t look so good” one says, maybe Roxy, “Are you feeling okay?” asks another, Jane? It’s getting harder to tell, the saturation is fading, bleeding the life from the world that used to be unnaturally vibrant. 

A queasy feeling rises from within you, the world spins forcing you to close your eyes, and losing control your body rebels against you, sickness bursting forth between the hands that cover your mouth. The satisfaction of eating moments before has been replaced by illness, cold and empty you shiver and hold your stomach. Sneaking a look you peer through a squint to see your hands, half afraid of what you’ll see. Scarlet covers your fingers, thick and hot, bile rises in your throat again, unbidden, and you struggle not to be sick on yourself. Recovering, you try to hold yourself up, finding all the strength within you has gone. It takes all your effort just to lift your head. When you’re eyes open again you see a hand extended to you, following it up the arm and shoulder you connect with Jake's eyes. Green and captivating, full of compassion and empathy he speaks to you, “It gets better.” The words swim to your ears from a far distance away, not matching with the eyes which were so close, holding time itself at bay. “I promise.” Taking strength from the voice echoing like distant thunder, you reach up, your bloody fingers grasping his wrist, the grip tight and binding. For a moment you stay, solid, immovable. Your faith in him suspending your fear, the awe you feel as you realize his belief in return, his faith within you, catches the breath in your chest. The moment lasts forever, but is over in an instant. And then everything shifts.

Outside of your control your arm pulls him forward, a disembodied hunger driving you forward. He doesn’t resist when you pull him into you, grabbing his forearm, your own repulsion drowned in blinding desire, you bite his arm below the elbow, ravenously tear the flesh. Only after your teeth have done their damage are you pulled away, some force ripping you from your prey, a yell of pain deafening you into submission. On the cold hard ground you lie, waiting. The noise of footsteps brings you to your senses. Eyes open, you see that the grass has disappeared into misty gray, feet and legs exposed atop black asphalt. Sitting up you turn about, trying to find them, but you are alone, the only person amongst the nothing. The sound of metal sliding against metal rings out behind you and raises the hairs on your neck, something so lethal and familiar your hand twitches at your side reflexively. It isn’t there. You turn as he raises the sword, triangular shades matching your own. Your hand raises as you curl up defensively, feebly trying to stop what you know is inevitable, what you know is necessary, what you know is a mistake, the cry coming from your chest they only real combat against a wordless strike and cold steal. 

“NOOO!”

“Dirk! Wake up!” You jerk awake, eyes flying open to see Jane recoil, whipping her hand away from your shoulder. Your shades are crooked, blond hair wild from the pillow, and she cringes from what you realize must be an accusing glare, muttering excuses. “You were twitching… moaning in your sleep, I wasn’t sure if you were okay…” she trails off. 

As her words come you cool down, settling back into the pillow on the ground. The soft apologetic words ease your panic, the nightmare fading into forgetfulness, leaving you facing your friends’ worried gaze. You’re embarrassed, not sure if the shout you remember was from the dream or from yourself. “I’m fine. It was just a bad dream.” You fix your glasses and take a deep breath, propped up on an elbow. The reassurance is hollow, it lands without feeling.

“’You sure?” she gives you a lingering look, already retreating, stung almost by your indifference. The barrier of your confidence was cracked; the phantom below shining through is a shock, the fleeting moment of close emotional contact that leaves you both raw. 

“Yeah.” Looking at the floor you break contact, and she returns to the kitchen.

You run fingers through your sleep tossed hair, leaning on your elbow at the foot of the couch. Looking over your shoulder you see Jake, still as the grave resting among the cushions. Letting the dream fade completely you rest a moment where you settled last night. Choosing the floor in front of the couch you put yourself between him and everything else. Or perhaps between everything else and him. You’re not sure who you were trying to protect from whom. The fact that you find yourself in sunlight under the same blankets you laid down with is somewhat of a novelty. For once a night passed uninterrupted. Feeling a little guilty, you speak up. “You guys should have woken me for watch last night.”

Roxy swings around the edge of the stairwell, from where she’d come fresh from a shower. “We figured you’d done enough in the past couple of days, you needed a break.” She stops and gives you another appraisal, “What don’t tell me you didn't want the rest?”

“No, I slept” you shake your head and shrug your shoulders in a non-committal way, “I’m just surprised I slept. I never sleep.” You try not to. The dreams suck. Always too detailed, too convoluted and complicated, you remind yourself to give your subconscious a pep talk to calm the freak down.

Taking another deep breath you look over at Jake, feeling surprisingly rested. You hadn’t noticed what a toll the extra watches were taking, that even a trip down your personal rabbit hole left you feeling better in the morning. “He didn’t give you guys any trouble then?” you ask to the room at large, nodding to the other figure laid out on the couch. 

“No.” Jane replies from beside the window, and Roxy looks up from digging around her backpack to shake in agreement. It was a peaceful night then. What a concept.

A few more moments pass as you wait for things to settle in your head, arms hugging you knees loosely watching the room, postponing your attack on the day a little longer just to let the peace of the moment rest. Roxy is busy fishing her mascara out of a makeup bag, a new shade of pink highlights her eyelids, possibly sparked by sobriety. Jane watches out the window distractedly while waiting for the water to filter through the bowl that took up the sink. Jake breaths behind you, the thick rattling noise you notice has become somewhat of a white noise, so routine that you wouldn’t know what to do if it wasn’t there. You look at him, His clothes are dirty. Maybe he likes argyle. You think about digging out a sweater from upstairs, thinking maybe the extra layer would help somehow. Nah. It would never work with his hair.

The man did need some new clothes though; he hadn’t changed for the last few days. It had been too frantic to think about it before, but you tuck in into your things to do list before pulling yourself to your feet. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” and without protest you excuse yourself from the room.

**Jane: Get Ready for the Day.**

The sun lights up the street filled with apartment subdivision as you watch out the window and take a long awaited drink of water. Being on the ground floor reminds you of home, a long way away, in a different and more suburban setting. Usually Dirk had preferred higher lofts and apartments, places situated conveniently above markets or restaurants. Once you even crashed in the cold but oddly reassuring upper levels of an old Baptist church downtown. It made the Ghost stories better that night anyway. Somehow the dark stone and stained glass had seemed impenetrable, if not confining or downright spooky. Thinking back all you remember was laughing at Roxy making drunken jokes about nuns. 

Now it’s just weird to think that that happened almost a week ago. Everything seemed so far removed from what life used to be, days seem to pass like dreams, but the weeks seem to last years. It messes with your head, and makes you want to feel grounded. Like you would do anything to do something remotely normal. You find yourself wanting to bake, just like you used to on mornings like this, waiting for the necessity of your courses to drag you downtown to campus. You’d purposefully chosen a schedule for your job at the bakery, the early mornings would pass too quickly, and you’d always leave feeling like you just started kneading. It resulted in quite a few instances of quick red box brownies between work and school. Something that supplied fuel for your friends teasing nickname batterwitch, having arrived late to class more than a couple of times with unnoticed batter in your hair.

Yeah. There’s a box of muffins calling your name today.

But comfort food is not the only thing missing from your life. You miss your family. By the time this summer had come around you were living alone at home, your parents had been offered a profitable position in aerospace engineering in Washington and had decided to move that spring. They hadn’t heard from you at all since the outbreak. The weight of missing them had been too heavy to bear, still was, and you didn’t want to think about it too much. There was a conversation that you’d had one of the first nights out, Dirk didn’t have anyone to worry about, but when you’d confided to Roxy and Jake they’d shared your anxieties. Parents, siblings, cousins. You’d had no contact with anyone. They probably thought that you were all dead by now. Suddenly you look down into your glass of water. That was an insensitive comment for your brain to make. A couple weeks ago that seemed like a much easier obstacle to overcome. Wanting to bake and read tumblr paled in comparison to really needing to survive. Your eyes search over your shoulder for the offended party. He didn’t hear it of course, he couldn’t have, not through that coma of his, and not when it was inaudible in the first place. But you’re still sorry.

Your glass makes a soft clink on the counter as you set it down and go over to the couch. His chest rises and falls awkwardly, not quite rhythmically, but it had been worse in the last couple of days, so his current doze is somewhat reassuring. Maybe there’s a remnant of his immune system left in there somewhere. 

Hesitantly you reach up and give his hand a squeeze. It’s pretty cold. The skin contrasts harshly against your own warm tones, making the pale color look all the worse. It’s his right arm, and the bandage you had wrapped around his upper arm just days ago was still there, stained with dark dried blood radiating out from a horseshoe. It should have never happened. Regret hits you like a stab wound. You should have noticed. You should have stopped. You should have said something. Anything. 

Vision blurred slightly you notice that he’s not wearing his glasses. They must have fallen here somewhere; your hands feel the carpet under the couch. You bend down and look with your eyes, a little bit of water falls to the ground and you can see better. There they are. You reach in and retrieve them, but instead of putting them on his face you just keep them. Hands hold the frames until they’re warm. Though bruised, he just looks at peace. You reach up again, and haltingly brush some stray hairs off his forehead. Then your hand just stays there, feeling the brown lock. A hand rests on your shoulder as Roxy kneels down next to you.

“Jane you’re breaking my heart. Come here.” She pulls you in for a hug and everything just is too much. You cry. You sob. Hanging on her shoulders you both stay that way for a long time. Eventually Roxy soothes your nerves, and you’re able to get ahold of yourself.

“Sorry.” You mumble.

“You don’t have to apologize. I know you like Jake. In fact I’m pretty sure everyone does, even Jake, though he can’t speak for himself right now so maybe I shouldn’t extend it that far—” she stops when she catches your eye. Really? She has to pull the blunt card now? “Sorry.” She trails off.

“I guess we’re both apologizing.” You say, using the heel of your hand to wipe an eye. 

She just sighs. “Yeah.”

“What are we going to do Roxy?”

“You ask me that a lot. If I knew anything about what I did beforehand I’d be a genius, but I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong gal.” She says, deflecting responsibility like a pro.

The guilt and heaviness around your shoulders won’t be deterred though. “What if there isn’t a cure? What if…”

“He never gets better?” she finishes. “Well, pressing forward is better than not trying at all. If we give up he’ll be dead for sure.” She has a point.

“I guess you’re right.” You say. It doesn’t really make you feel better though. You breathe a heavy sigh that hitches a little with a stray sob.

“The bright side is, though he doesn’t talk anymore he’s still a pretty docile zombie.”

You shiver. “Don’t call him that.”

“Jane.” She rocks back a little and focuses you with a piercing gaze. “All he does is stagger and moan. What do you think he is?”

“Yeah, but, I just,” your head falls into your hands “can’t handle that right now. He can’t get worse. He can’t be a zombie. I won’t accept it. It’s not allowed.”

“Naw. He won’t eat people. He doesn’t have it in him.” She seems to notice that that doesn’t help your mood any. The silence accentuates your tears hitting the ground. “What would he say if he could talk?” she stretches herself thinking. “He’d probably say some doofy British thing like ‘buck up,’ or something about britches. Hmm. Or,” She pauses, leaving the jokes behind, “or he’d tell us to have hope.” She pauses, that feels right. “I think we need to hear that more often.” 

She leans her head on you and both of you just breathe. That’s how you are when Dirk comes down the stairs. He stops about halfway, seeing you, but focuses on the climb the rest of the way down. He walks to your side without saying anything.

After taking it in he speaks. “Maybe we should take a break this morning. We’ve been on the road a lot. I think we all could use a minute to just relax before we head out.”

Relief fills the room. “I think that sounds good. You have some muffins don’t you Jane? We should have muffins for lunch. Get your batterwitch on.” She squeezes you one last time before helping you up.  
Yeah. There’s a box of muffins calling your name today.

**Dirk: Relax, It's Baking Not Rocket Science.**

It doesn’t take long for the kitchen to become a bustling hub of activity. She takes time first to get her bearings you notice, pulling open drawers and cupboards just to see what’s there. You watch at first just to make sure that she’s going to be okay, something about seeing her cry is just scary. As they go through the discoveries of the cupboards you can see that the red eyes are drying, the poignant emotion swallowed up in some kind of creative excitement or whatever. She gets really excited over the deep red kitchen aid hand mixer “Roxy! It’s just like mine at home!” 

“Yep.” She says. 

“And oooh, I like these glass tuppleware. Mine were better though. They had glass tops too, so they didn’t have the problem of melting over contents of high heat or in the dishwasher.” She hands one to Roxy.

“Cool.” Rox tries to sound interested but just sets the container on the counter.

Satisfied, your attention turns to your bag, making sure that it is packed for impending departure, and do small things to clean up the apartment. It’s probably a non-issue, but it still feels weird to leave someone else’s house all crazy. But when you run out of things to do in a whopping five minutes, you kind of just stand between the couch and the kitchen’s breakfast bar looking lost. 

“Sit down Dirk, we’ll need you to taste test in a minute.” Jane says, poking around at the oven, getting a handle on the controls.

You look around you one last time, and then decisively flip the high stool around and sit on it backwards, watching the organized chaos from behind a box of red spoon blueberry muffins. You’re not sure which is more remarkable, the amount of energy going into this project that is supposed to be made easy in three steps, or how hard it is to sit down and not do anything. Even sitting there’s a nagging something that makes you need something in your hands. There’s a butter knife that has been left from the kitchen reconnaissance, you snag it from across the counter and begin twirling it through your fingers. 

“Dirk you ever play that weird Russian knife game?” Roxy calls from where she stands in the corner, trying to stay out of the line of fire. 

“It’s not uniquely Russian, but I could beat you. Wanna play?” you bait, throwing her the life ring out of the kitchen.

“No you don’t! I need you to help me! Can you grab the half a cup, and third? They’re in the drawer behind you.” Jane calls from where she stands deliberating between mixing bowls. 

You raise an eyebrow at Roxy but she simply shrugs her shoulders and gives you a look that says ‘thanks for trying’ before reaching into the drawer and retrieving the measuring cups. 

There’s a shifting behind you, and you look at the couch over your shoulder only to raise your eyes to Jake standing in the middle of the room. You stiffen a little wondering if there’s anything going on, but he just stands there, limp and directionless. After a minute he’s obviously not going anywhere, so you call to him, “Jake, come over here and sit.” 

He sways a little, as if he can’t decide what to do, but then he stumbles and shuffles over. You pull the chair out beside you and he falls backward into it. After he’s sitting you notice the bustle had paused, so with a hand slap to the counter you say “There! Now it’s a family affair. Continue baking.”

Jane and Roxy take a second to be sure that nothing’s wrong, and then return to the matters at hand. You take the moment of diverted attention to look him over. He’s just kind of staring into the distance. He’s still pale, that hasn’t really changed, the bruises don’t help at all, but it’s the complete lack of energy that seems different. He’s really just staring, all his weight resting on the back support of the stool, which wasn’t much, so he was slouched and lopsided. It’s actually kind of impressive that someone can sit at that angle and not fall off the chair. But he’s balanced, and so he stays. 

He needs to eat something you realize. How long has it been since he’d actually swallowed anything? You think back. Probably not since… the gas station. And that was what, two, three days ago? No kidding he sways. It’s a wonder he can stand up at all.

You get up and go to the fridge. It’s surprisingly full, there’s even eggs in here. That was luck, just when you band decides to bake. You look around deciding, and grab a couple different things to try, yogurt, some berries, check the lunchmeat and find it hasn’t gone bad yet. 

“Dirk can you pass the box of mix?” Jane asks behind you, not noticing that you were in the fridge.

“Sure” you say, but you’re still eyeing the items in the doors wondering if pickles are a good idea. They have electrolytes right? Before you can shuffle the things in your arms to grab the jar you hear something slide on the counter and Jane calls “Thanks.”

Wait a minute. I didn’t pass that. You close the fridge and see that Jake had leaned forward and pushed the box to where Jane could grab it. She was too busy substituting something in a three ingredient recipe to notice. 

Huh. 

You decide to let that go unnoticed. 

Instead you sit down with the random mishmash and tell him “Now we’re going to play a game. It’s called eat something.” You pick out the yogurt first. Pull off the lid, and insert a spoon. How much you wonder? You scrape off the giant spoonful that was scooped; instead try for something like a teaspoon. “Okay. Open your mouth.” You hold the spoon up but he remains grim faced, not budging. Roxy catches your eye, watching interested over Jane’s head. The spoon waits next to his jaw, but he keeps it clamped shut in a hard line. He doesn’t really focus on anything but you can just feel the stubborn resistance. “Fine. Not yogurt.” 

You dump it back in the small cup and switch weapons. “How about blueberries? I think you like blueberries.” The residual yogurt helps to corral them onto the spoon, and you’re back at it. Nothing happens. You wait, but he refuses to acknowledge the spoon. “Come on Jake, open your mouth.” You go out on a limb and actually grab his face, trying to squish his cheeks open. This goes on for a few seconds, but then he grudgingly leans forward and bites the spoon. “Haha!” Victory. 

Pulling back you reload the spoon and are back at it before you realize a key detail. “Okay, now you have to chew and swallow it. I’m sure you remember how to do that.”

Instead the corners of his mouth droop down in a small frown before he spits them out slack jawed. The blueberries roll between his crossed arms over the edge of the counter and onto the floor.

“Are you kidding me? What are you, two?” you set the spoon down on the table in exasperation. 

“Dirk are you sure it’s a good idea to make him eat? The last few times we tried he just threw it back up.” Jane said after sliding a full muffin pan into the pre-heated oven. “He’s been pretty good so far without it.”

“He hasn’t eaten in three days. That’s not healthy.”

“Well to be fair he isn’t really in good health. And obviously he doesn’t want to eat.” 

“I’m sure he just needs something he wants.” You try everything left in your pile, the pickles, weird vegetables, even the lunch meat but he doesn’t go for any of it. They watch as you do, and after all your options are exhausted there’s a collective loss of excitement, each of you in some way was hoping it would work. But to be final Jake leans forward, head falling in a long arc to his arms. It almost looks like it hurt, but he doesn’t move. You sigh and take everything that had been associated with the experiment and dump it into the trash. It’s the easiest way to avoid contamination. Jane just watches as you wash your arms with dish soap. And then she hands you the empty mixing bowl and together you each begin cleaning up the kitchen. 

You’re washing the first muffin tin when it happens. There’s a shuffle, a clatter, and then Jane gasps and screams.

“EEEAAAAGH! JAKE!” The tin doesn’t have time to crash in the sink before you whip around, hand on hilt. Your heart is in your throat, but it doesn’t really prepare you for what you see. Jane is clutching the doors of the fridge; the eggs she was putting away scattered and shattered on the floor. Jake’s on the floor too, stretched out, hanging on her ankle which also happened to be in his mouth. _Shit. Shit shit shit._ But there’s still that lack of energy, he just hangs there.

“Is he biting you?” you ask, trying not to betray the fear you feel.

She’s shuddering but she shakes her head slowly, starting to sob again. 

“Okay. Okay!” letting your sword go you kneel down supporting her leg. “Don’t move okay?”

She just nods her head, whole body nervously shaking, hanging on the fridge.

Grabbing her leg it is shuddering, but it’s pretty limp, and you gently try to lift it. Jake isn’t really forcing his grip, but at the same time it’s not like he’s not gumming her. “Let her go Jake. You don’t want to eat Jane.”

He looks you in the eye, so distant, almost confused. He stares past you again, giving her ankle a long lick but then laying back down on the ground. After that you try to pull her out again, and this time her foot slips through his fingers. 

Once Jane realizes she’s free she hops to the side on shaky legs and falls into the corner of the kitchen. “OH! Oh my ohmygod ohmygod!” she disintegrates into tears.

You fall back into the cupboards with her, heart pounding and know that you need to do something to console her. Awkwardly you pat her shoulder, and then give her a half hug and rub her arms. She falls into you sobbing, it makes you stiffen, but you let her stay there. “It’s okay. It’s okay now. Shh. It’s, it’s okay.” Is it? Roxy is across the kitchen where she’d landed, perched atop the counter. She just looks at you wide eyed. 

What are you doing?

This is insane.

 _I’m sorry,_ you think. _I’m so so sorry._

The four of you just stay there for a while in various amounts of shock or coma.

The oven timer goes off. Nobody moves. It’s not important anymore.

Then there’s a knock at the door.

It’s loud. It makes Jane jump. Admittedly you jumped too, but so did Jake, and you stare at him staring at you from the floor, poised on cocked arms ready to push off any minute. 

There’s another knock. Both of you launch, him from the floor, you from the cabinets behind you, in a bolt for the door. Shockingly he is a lot faster than you, raw reflexes beating the cognitive race before your legs could try to match the pace. It makes you have to vault over the couch, and while he rips open the door you draw your sword and throw yourself at the window blade first. The glass shards pull at your shirt and you jump from the shower, throwing your sword with it. Lunging you grab the back of his shirt as he throws the door knocker on the ground, and hooking an arm around his throat you push off, reversing direction for the wall. It is an awful struggle. He had the kid by the throat, and the added resistance is no help. Throwing your whole force into it you push Jake back, slamming him against the wall. The impact would be enough to wind a normal person, but Jake is not acting like a normal person anymore. It’s actually pretty scary you notice, and although he isn’t outright hurting you, the look in his eye bodes pretty ill for whoever the idiot is on the ground. 

There’s a choking cough from behind you. “Augh.” That sounds familiar.

“JOHN?!!” Roxy yells from the busted doorway.

Jake tries to use the distraction to duck below your arms, and you have to kneel and throw and elbow into his chest to push him back into the wall. It takes everything you have to make him stay there. After pinning his arms down with your shoulders he’s subdued enough for you to join this conversation.

“John get out of here!”

“...You're ...He …He’s a zombie. …He was choking me!” the voice starts to get stronger, as you hear him stand up.

Jake gets a second wind. His prey is still walking. You grunt and gasp as much as he does to keep him from jumping on John again. Still, he pulls you around from the wall, and you have to knee him to slow him down. He feels the groin still. Too many nerves there to ignore. It drops him to the ground, and you hold him down long enough to get an eye lock on John.

“I said GO! NOW!”

The scrawny punk doesn’t need much. The look in his eyes is mingled with shock horror and fear. He turns and runs down an alleyway, feet picking up dust.

When he’s out of sight, you let Jake go. He just stumbles forward on his hands before giving up, and falling in a crumpled heap. 

“Aagh,” you straighten up and teeter a little, panting. You can’t bring yourself to look at Jane or Roxy. Not after wrestling your best friend to the ground because he wanted to eat some kid. There’s a button in your hand. Fisted, your knuckles meet your forehead around Jake’s button. This is a huge mess. It makes your head pound. 

In a fit you jump and shout and throw the button down the street as hard as you can. The haze prevents you from seeing it land, but you’re not even watching. Instead you turn around, a different kind of resolve making your shoulders hard. You pick up your sword from where it landed in a sea of pointy glass shards, holster it, and then turn again to pick Jake up. He just ragdolls, and it’s another fight to pull him back into the apartment. Neither Roxy or Jane say anything. Maybe they’re in shock. They’re probably in shock. 

You have to drag his limp body to the couch, but when you try to throw him on there he doesn’t want to lie down again. There’s a minute of arm flailing before you bypass that nonsense and grab his shirt again at his chest. You pick him up off the couch a little to make a point, throwing him down. The wood frame cracks a little. “Jake dammit, stay there!” he goes limp again, and stares past your knees at the wall. Good.

With one last shake of his shoulders you leave him there and go grab your bag. Tearing it open you examine its contents and consider the plan you have in mind. There’s some twine you noticed in the hall closet, that and duct tape is about all you’ll need. When you come back from the closet pack on your shoulders you see Jane and Roxy for the first time.

They’re scared. 

Not only that but from where they stand by Jake’s feet they’re recoiled, but not from him. 

They’re scared of you.

Oh. Well. There wasn’t really any hiding the anger. It’s there. They saw it. You’re mad. But mostly just at yourself.

“I have to go get him something to eat. We can’t travel safely with him like this and expect him to just not eat.” You say, eyes darting to the ground, and then up at them again.  
You’re not sure what else to say.

“You’re just going to leave us here? With him?” Roxy points at the couch without looking, infuriation sparking her eye.

“Someone has to watch him or he might get up and not come back.”

Jane is in shock still, but she is beginning to recover. “What do we do when he gets up again?”

It sucks that for all of you it’s not a question of if anymore, but when. It takes you a minute to reply, but you swallow hard. “Shoot him in the leg first,” you look at Roxy, “and if he doesn’t stop… make him.”

They don’t say any more, the weight just makes you choke. 

You stagger out the door. “I’ll be back before sundown.” The Door clicks behind you. Your shoes crunch on the glass beneath your feet, and it makes you stop. “You could probably put a blanket or something up in the window too.”

“Okay.” Roxy calls. “We got it.”

With one last look inside you take off down the street. The jarring effect of running helps to clear your head a little, but you know that you’ll need something faster for what you have in mind. So, seeking out the right building you circle around the side, looking for something specific. The front said office, so there has to be some kind of storage or lockers here somewhere. In the back there’s a covered area surrounded by chainlink, and manipulating the lock it doesn’t take very long to find what you need. There are a couple different bikes to choose from, but rather than the road bikes or some girl’s pink bike you single out the fat tires of a mountain bike. More resistance pedaling, but less likely to blow out. Plus if you’re fast enough you might have enough time to make it out of town.

Not that you’re running away. The stray thought is there, but you throw it out because it is not nor ever will be an option. 

Mounting up it takes a bit to get used to the gears, but then you’re off to the races. The map is planned out in your head, now just a couple hours and there should be enough time to do some good hunting. You just hope that there’s some real game in those woods. Thinking as you ride you don’t notice the arms that jerk out toward your wheel, but you’re going too fast for them to take much effect. All you feel are the shocks against your thighs, and the inhuman groan as it disappears behind you. 

 

After following the shoulder of the interstate you pull off at an exit blocked by concrete barriers, into the back roads. The sun was still pretty high, you’d guess it’s around two in the afternoon. Should be enough time. 

You wind around the deserted scrubland and woods, seeking out the roads much less traveled. Before long you’re on a dirt road that is more grass than gravel. Parking the bike next to a tree you do your best to remember the landmarks, even picking up a large rock and moving it to the center of the road. That would be the worst thing to get all the way out here and just get lost. After being sure you’ll remember the spot you set off through the grass. Having only gone hunting a couple of times with Jake you hope your skill set will be enough, he was always more of the backwoodsman. The sun was hot on your neck as you rode, and traipsing around in the grass makes you sticky, the thin knarled branches overhead providing little cover from the September sun. You pass a creek, and change directions to follow its course, looking for telltale signs of a rabbit run. It’s hard, the overgrown grass from summer was very different from late fall, and you try not to second guess yourself when you follow a path a little ways to the south. But after a while you find a den, and your confidence returns. You retrace your steps, and cut a branch from one of the dry trees with your blade. Swords are not hatchets so it’s tricky and a little heart wrenching to do, but after it’s down it doesn’t take much to clean off the twigs. You’ll sharpen the blade later. 

With the new tool fashioned from the branch you position it over the center of the run, so a fork hangs like a tunnel where the rabbit could dart through. Then you use the twine to make a tiny noose, and wind the end of the snare around the branch, like he’d shown you last year. Then you leave it, trying to disturb the wilderness as little as possible. Returning to the stream you repeat the process, finding a couple other possible game runs. After the snares are in place, you look up. The sun has moved a bit, it’s probably edging on toward four now. It’s probably too much to hope that there’s something caught this quickly, so you continue along the stream to see how far it goes. Before long it loops and switches back to a large drain, and pushing through the trees at the edge you can see that there’s a small family farm out past a field. How quaint. Heading back into the woods, you sit down near the streams head, poking a stick at the rocks below the water. 

At around five the angle of the sun starts to pierce even through your shades. Not much daylight left now, so it’s now or never. 

The first snare is untouched. Nothing’s been down here. Figures.

The second snare though, had been dragged off its run into the grass. Following the branch you grab the twine and lift the small limp body. Dang. It worked too well. A while ago you’d decided that a live one would probably be best, since zombies rarely ever cleaned up the decaying bodies of the dead. It’s probably also why he didn’t want the ham: they want the heartbeat. You cut the twine off its neck and leave it for coyotes. 

The next two are empty, and as you head to the last one you’re considering going back and getting the corpse. But you’re in luck, the sound you make walking scares something out of the grass, and there’s a scream as the animal strangles itself. Surely there is some kind force looking after you today. You feel a little sorry for the rabbit as it struggles, until you try to grab it and it scratches you with its hind legs. Not sorry anymore, you grab the scruff and its feet, your arms jerking as it kicks. Rabbits are surprisingly powerful little pieces of junk. Soon though it starts to weaken, and you’re able to open your bag and slip it inside. You cut the twine, but away from the noose, leaving the end around its neck. It’ll loosen, but you want it to feel caught, so it won’t try and escape. You zip up the bag and put it on. It struggles still, but not as hard as before. Then with your catch you head back to the road and find your bike. 

 

The hour and a half it takes to race back to the apartment flies by. There are signs of the undead here and there, but none of them try very seriously to pursue you, on a bike you are faster than them. Weave through the cars, use a wheelchair access ramp to bypass a bad crash, and speed over the sidewalk like it’s nobody’s business. The wind whips through your hair, but it doesn’t do much to blow away your rising anxiety. It’s hard to tell if you’re more anxious about what you’ll find or about what he’ll do. By the time you curve through the apartment complex to the where your friends were your stomach is in a hard knot. 

The tires skid to a stop, and you just let the bike fall. Skirting into the apartment the stench of the dead in the street almost makes you sick. It’ll be nice to leave this place. 

Jane is by the window, watching as you come in through a folded corner of a blanket they’d hung to cover the hole. Roxy was across the room, rifle across her lap, poised for Jake. He hadn’t moved off the couch, and you notice that he’s asleep again.

“How’s he been?” you ask in the doorway.

“Fine. He went back to sleep shortly after you left.” Roxy says.

You nod. Taking a minute you just breathe, letting your heart return to relative normalcy. Then your bag shuffles a little, and Jane raises an eyebrow. You look at her but don’t offer any explanation; rather walking over to Jake you slap his face. Not hard, but enough to get a response. He squints his eyes up at you and raises his hands like a defensive animal. Grabbing his shirt at the shoulder you drag him off the couch with some protest, and make it to the door. Then you notice Roxy has risen a little out of her chair, and Jane is getting up too.

“Don’t follow us.” Pulling open the door you hear Roxy start to argue with you but it’s too late, you’re already out the door. 

You yank Jake down the street a little and around the corner of the building. When you let him go he stumbles up against the wall to hold himself up. In a moment of sympathy you regard his wraithlike condition, but you know it isn’t entirely truthful. He may be weak but that doesn’t make him not dangerous. The sight does help you come to terms though with what you’re going to do.

You unzip the bag. The rabbit inside jerks, trying to jump at the light. You grab it before it can, but he notices the movement and trains on it like some possessed cat. He doesn’t leap at it like he did with John, but he does find it interesting. Good, you guess. The rabbit tries to bite your hand, and just in case you apply a handicap, breaking one of its hind legs. Then you throw it on the ground. 

It stumbles and struggles, but the leg prevents it from getting far. Then it stops and tries to play dead. You don’t watch the rabbit, you’re focused on Jake. He follows the vermin, but won’t go after it; instead his eyes keep flicking back at you. After a moment you have to snort a little, he’s actually worried that you’ll try to stop him. 

“Jake it’s yours. I got it for you.” When he still hesitates you have to go and scoot it toward him with your foot. This makes the rabbit jump, and that motion sentences it to death. Jake lunges, and you look away. The sound is enough to turn your stomach, harsh reality forcing its way up your throat. You bite back the bile, but it doesn’t make the feeling leave. That could have been John. It could have been Jane. Just how dangerous this all is hits you, and makes you knees shake. How long are you going to drag this out? You sneak a look over your shoulder and wish you hadn’t. Maybe you should just end it. Thinking back to the night in the alley you remember that fear in his eye, how scared he was of becoming what was now happening behind you. Before you let yourself take the time to think your way out of it you draw your sword. An emotion you don’t really know what to name fills your chest as you deliberately turn and walk to face him. The katana rises over your head on its own. Then he looks at you. What is it? Why does that look familiar? 

Out of your memory the words echo, “It gets better. I promise.”

The sword crashes to the ground. Your dream comes back to you, and you realize that he’s looking at you with… with compassion. The hairs raise on your neck, and your breath comes heavily. How? You’ve had some pretty terrible dreams before, but this just feels like a personal mind rape. Zombies don’t feel compassion! You stumble back against the wall, shaking. Jake just goes back to his dinner. The déjà vu threatens to take you over, feelings from your subconscious tainting the reality around you. Hands fist and grind at your eyes, tangle in your hair, frustrated and infuriated at yourself both from almost killing him and also for not killing him. 

Why is this so hard?

Soon he’s finished. Just the tangled fur and broken bloody bones remain in a mess on the ground. He considers it and then drags it off into a corner. You just chuckle sob. This is so so weird. Returning he stops in front of you and just stands there, head lopsided, waiting.

You heave a sigh. “We need to get you cleaned up man. There is no way I am going to walk around with a bloody zombie in tow.” Then you push yourself up and retrieve your sword. It’s not terribly hard to find the hose line and it’s a fairly simple matter to get him to kneel down and get his head and hands wet. Table manners are apparently a thing of the past you note, washing off even behind his ears. When things look pretty good you head back, not any surer about what the future holds. 

We’ll just take this one day at a time.


	5. Chapter 5

September 28, --Day 22 of infection.

Deep shadows accentuate the walls of your office, offset only by the lamps you kept on at night, and the blue glow of your four gridded monitors which were open to various documents and video footage that you were reviewing. The desk was almost completely hidden, only a few signs of pencil holders and paper trays suggest the former organization it used to exemplify. Now the lab reports, and news coverage, and editorial reviews, sticky notes, machine receipts, personal correspondences, and business cards were so out of hand you’d just stopped trying to command where they fell. Somehow when you need them you find them. There is almost some comfort in having it all there, all close, that you wouldn’t have anticipated, having habitually organized and filed for so many years of your life that the difference is as liberating as letting down your hair. Not that you have hair. Well, enough of it to put up in the first place, the silvery wisps that adorn your temples wouldn’t fit into a hair band. And it’s debatable at this point if it’s really yours.

It’s hard not to wonder if the change in pace is a reflection upon your mental state. The photographs and degrees hang on the wall as always, but the slim figure pictured there with her bright almost lethal smile, ambitious to change the world no longer reflects the woman now hunched over the keyboard. Now the gaunt shapes of your shoulders and face elicit looks of sympathy from your younger associates. Only the bright green flash of your eyes reveals the deep hearted drive within. 

There is dust on those pictures, despite the fact that they were recently packed in boxes and shipped 300 miles, the thick grey layer had been set there by years of sunlight exposure, and now would take quite a scrubbing to remove. Some of the articles date back to the eighties, clippings from personal accomplishments purchased through the newspapers for a few quarters. A lot of the dishevelment is a product of the move itself, not many of the pictures made it to actual nails, most of them lean on the shelves of your desk, or are stacked on the floor next to the door, but most of what used to be your office is still packed and piled in cardboard that you’d thrown into the most convenient corner and left there. At times there’s something that you need, and so you dig whatever it is from the mess, only to leave the boxes in their state of molestation.

There really hasn’t been any time to breathe. Most nights are spent like this one, reading and re reading your screen until at some point the words stop making sense and then you wake up to sunlight from behind and marks from the keyboard on your forehead. On and on. Run to a meeting. Supervise the next test. Attend a conference. Attempt to form some kind of an excuse, invent a solution, and find a cure. The lines of age in your face are deepened by the fatigue this fight has caused. It’s the hardest you’ve ever stretched yourself in your 40 years of work, but there isn’t any alternative you tell yourself. You can sleep when this hell is over. One way or another. War has been declared and willing or not you’ve been dragged down every line of it.

The hours flow together, stretched like taffy by the effort of evaluating and writing the cover to yet another of the departments attempts to put an end to all this. Some of these reports were mundane and routine, but you’d had hope for this one. There had been some early signs of improvements in cell cultures with this particular synthesized protein. But the continuing studies had shown that long term care was not viable, in order to completely inhibit the virus the dosage required was too strong for _any_ kind of organic life. _Not exactly what we’re going for._

By the time you’re writing the last few conclusive paragraphs the door to your office opens. You don’t need to turn around to know the owner of the tall lean shadow that falls over your desk. 

“I thought I’d find you here.” The owner of the voice crosses his arms in the doorway, leaning on the frame.

“Mituna. To what pleasure do I owe your visit?” you reply, thoughts still following your fingers as they fly across the keyboard. 

“Well, I thought I’d just inform you that there are thome pretty big whigs downstairs getting their human panties in a bunch because the head of rethearch and development is still here in her office.” Oop. You notice that you’d switched the data from two columns in the conclusive statement. Fixing the error it takes you a moment to really process the conversation at hand. “…Then again things would probably be better for everyone if human blackrom was a thing. Then Marcus and Perkins could get an effing room.”

“You really should be careful what you say about your colleagues. Biggest brain or not most those men wouldn’t hesitate to press charges, and equal rights would not be on your side.”

“Well, nobody will be on your thide if you’re any later. Conference, remember?”

“What time is it?” Pulling the arm up on your coat you stare at your watch. Ten past six. Drat. You save and exit the report before snatching up a folder and shuffling a stack of relevant looking papers into your briefcase. You run out the room only to remember the door, and there’s a second of searching for keys before it’s locked and you’re on your way. 

“Did you get the results for the second batch?” you ask sideways as you try to match his long stride. It ends up being about two paces of yours to every one of his.

“Yep, the thamples are being thpun now. The paperwork will be on your desk in the morning.” He’s tall; even if he weren’t unique in his field his height would turn enough heads. Add on top of that the silhouette of dual horns and a pale slate complexion to match the walls and it’s hard not to be a little intimidated by Mituna Captor. 

“Good,” you say, “thank you for doing that.”

As always happens when you two walk the halls together the conversations pause and break up as scientists halt whatever time wasting verbosities held over reception areas and in doorways, jumping up to work they felt guilty avoiding. Part of you is glad that the snap in your pace cracks an inaudible whip over their heads. But there is a sadness too, a deeper more caring part wants to tell them to talk, let the anxiety go by sharing jokes and comics, that they shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting to be free.

You wait after he pushes the button for the elevator. The lights begin to change above the doors, charting horizontally the vertical rise of the car. “Have you spoken with that intern, what was her name…? Jody, Julie about yesterday?” 

“Uhh, yeah I did.” He pauses and you wait, while the silence drags out a little. He runs a hand through his thick knot of hair that obscured his eyes. The bell for the elevator rings, and the aged doors open with some amount of mechanical arthritic groaning. When you step inside you notice that there is a slight flush to the edges of your colleague’s ears.

“I thuggested that she re-take the HAZMAT certification after she dropped the tray, and that she’d be thuspended from active work until she was cleared again,” he started, in almost a harsh tone. But after a breath his voice changed, almost in a crack of defeat, “then she broke down and told me that her family had found her matethprit on the fence down in Ohio. Dead.”

The troll’s sensitivity you notice was heightened by his bipolarity, and momentarily you admire him completely. The rattling confines of the elevator provide the privacy the information warranted. Personal involvement had become a very serious matter in your department; professionals who had excelled in their field for years were breaking under pressure. Pressure that came from media willing to raise any pariah or scapegoat offered, pressure that came down from the ranks above, and pressure that came from the unbearable weight of loved ones lost. There were many much more qualified than his intern who had already broken.

“…I, I told her that she could take a few days off,” he speaks up “at least until she feels up to it. That she could call the office when she was ready.” These cases were coming up over and over again. Under normal circumstances HR would be responsible to coordinate and plan workloads and coping options, either through a company counselor or psychologist, or ensuring some sort of reported personal visits to trained private professionals. Those kinds of benefits were only being seen by the key team members these days. Interns were much more replaceable than doctorates.

You just nod, knowing that it’s entirely likely that she won’t call.

As the elevator brakes to a stop four floors down the added force feels like a piston pushing down from above. Then the doors slide open with geriatric flare. The war must go on.

When you turn the corner to the conference room the lights are already turned down, leaving only the headlights near the front of the room to spotlight an aged man in a white coat. The rest of the seats around the room are already filled, and you walk as purposefully and apologetically as you can manage to your assigned seat. 

The speaker notices the door swinging shut in the back and addresses your company. “Thank you for finding her Dr. Captor. You may be excused.” 

“I would appreciate it if Captor says,” you speak up as you slide the briefcase under the desk and pull out the chair. “We could benefit from another pair of eyes and ears.”

Mituna is caught holding the handle of the door, wary and unsure. After a pause the speaker lets out a huff. “Very well.” The door clicks shut and Mituna reaches behind a panel in the back of the room to retrieve a folding chair before walking down to join you. The doctor beside you scoots a little to give you more room, and you smile in appreciation at the gesture. He doesn’t reciprocate, but shoots a thin lipped look at Captor before turning back to his notes. Looking around the room you catch other eyes appraising your table, even a few heads tipping together to pass comments. 

“…why don’t you ask me if I want to stay I can thpeak for myself but no!” Captor’s steam is palpable. Knowing the looks of half the room are focused on him he keeps his rage to a whisper and tries to make his gangly shoulders level with your petite frame. “Insufferable nook thucking thquanch.” 

You let out a small fluff of laughter, shake your head and prepare your pen for writing. Mituna may be the only troll in the room but you feel much more comfortable about enduring these meetings with a real ally around than without him. There is a slight feeling of pity that he had to endure discomfort on your behalf, but it had been like that for a long time—ever since you sponsored his schooling and internship, and pulled the strings required to get him on salary. In your eyes it was worth it, even the treacherous years of fine tuning his expletives and working with Internal to compromise the cultural difference. The world needed a lot more Mituna Captors.

As the lights dim further the speaker steps up to the front of the desks and begins to address the audience in earnest. His head void of hair shines in the spotlight, and the screen behind him is blank for all except white letters proclaiming his title, DR SCRATCH, CDC Chief Operating Officer.

“Thank you for meeting here today. May I remind us all to make notes and even set alarms, these meetings are of too much significance to ignore the etiquette of timeliness.”

The chatter that gave the room impatient life died away with his opening words. Attention and respect now in his control he uses it to address the crowd of researchers, officers, and you even note a few members of political importance. His voice never raises much above a conversational tone but instead cuts the silence with authority.

“I probably don’t need to remind you that it has been 22 days since the first reported case outside Atlanta. You’ll remember last week it was decided that organized probe operations would be sent through the airspace of the affected areas. The air force executed the program with efficiency, and have reviewed the footage and prepared a report.” Without looking at the screen behind him he turned and aimed a small remote. The screen changed from blank to a graphic of the air force seal, only to begin cycling through time stamped air footage of major cities and their distance into the infected range. The clips were brief, matching the words being spoken by scratch.

“Charlotte, North Carolina: Two treatment areas, population at 50% quarentine, reported infection 30%.” A lot of the images that had become familiar flashed across the screen, Charlotte was one of the healthiest cities across the fence, but even so the population lived in a state of refuge, barring the disease as much as possible with inner barriers. Few people lived in actual residences, most were holed up in stadiums and churches. There were pictures of brave professionals treating the infirm, keeping it as orderly as possible to secure a true quarantined group. But there was, as you noticed more and more in clips from the media, an undertone in those pictured in the background—a reluctance, a resentment, looks shot over shoulders or where they thought they weren’t in view, piercing the invading lens. But before you could point it out to Mituna the perspective changes to short aerial clips, detailing the outer areas of charlotte, deserted, except for the noticeable corpses of those slain in the streets.

As the footage cycles through the cities the theme becomes absolute. “Nashville, Tennesee. Two hundred and seventy three miles from the fence. Estimated infection 80%” The camera swoops down the streets from above, a small shadow of the helicopter pictured on screen. Cars are strewn in the streets, windows from storefronts broken out, but the physical carnage is nothing compared to the human peril in the streets. “Memphis, Tennesee. Two hundred and eighty three miles from the fence. Estimated infection 80%” As the streets change you keep searching for those estimated few, the ones who were surviving, but the height of the footage makes it impossible to tell if the wandering shapes are shocked souls or infected bodies. “St Louis Missouri: one treatment location, inner fence completion 70%, population quarantine rate at 30%, reported infection 60%” 

“Atlanta, Georgia. Distance from fence, two hundred and forty six miles. Estimated infection, 90%.” There is a moment of sadness as you look upon the streets that for years were your home. Now they were near deserted, still as a crypt for those few remaining.

“Orlando Florida. Distance from fence, five hundred and thirty miles. Estimated infection 90%” The once lush vacationland also had its chilling turn for the macabre as bodies mixed with palm and orange trees.

“little Rock Arkensas. Three hundred and forty six miles from the fence. Estimated infection, 80%.” The streets and shots of the river were still and silent. No signs of life grace the once proud gem of the American planes.

“Jackson Mississippi. Five hundred and eighty seven miles from the fence. Estimated infection, 85%.” Downed power lines remained unrepaired from a recent storm, the blackened houses and trees surrounding the damage were a dark reminder of the lack of stewardship.

“Houston Texas. Seven hundred and seventy seven miles from the fence. Estimated infection, 90%.” Heat waved off of buildings, giving a hellish illusion to the graphic scene.

“Oklahoma City, four hundred and ninety eight miles from the fence. Estimated infection 85%.” Caught at sunset this footage is deep in purple shadows. It carries the taste of a land forlorn and lost, the lack of life thrown into dark ink upon the face of buildings and streets.

“Dallas Texas. Six hundred and twenty nine miles from the fence. Estimated infection, 90%.” This set is dark, only the hint of blue on the horizon remains. But with the power outages the streets show up on the infrared cuts crystal clear, clogged with cars and busses, and bodies. But then the camera changes its function to the visible spectrum, and it becomes noticeable why—there are a few of the tall buildings that have dim office lights still flickering. Particularly the helicopter sweeps close to a line of lights shining like a white caterpillar in one of the high rises. The camera focuses on the windows, but the floor inside is empty, offices and stage rooms to a news station deserted, and like the streets previous carry the evidence of the disease.

Just as suddenly as it was pictured the buildings change to different clips of farms and plantations. The only signs of life are livestock that have been left to the field, and the predators that found them there. “Rural infection rates vary, estimated infection rate 80%.” 

As the images came to an end the screen returned to the Air Force emblem, and taking a breath Scratch changes tune from recitation to command. “It is in light of this knowledge that we must make decisions today. What comes from this meeting may change the direction of the future of America, if not the human race. For the interest of those involved we must look at these facts and renew our sense of urgency.” He looks up to meet the eyes of those before him, reinforcing the weight of his words. 

“The board has asked me to present the long term plans for safety regulations and treatment. Courtesy of Doctor’s Frieden and Arias,” He gestured to the other two individuals seated on the stage, and you recognize the director and deputy director both are present in person “we will be reviewing health of citizens, the feasibility of containment, and progress of the solution.”

“It was advised shortly after the outbreak that those in areas distant from the epicenter would need to be cautious and vigilant in personal hygiene practices. Facemasks were issued in more than 20 cities, and we’ve estimated that due to civilian and structural response we’ve seen a significant remission of cases within contained areas. We are continuing to ensure that all households have the supplies that they need, including an additional issue of 1.2 million masks. Those will be distributed at hospitals and local drug stores, with names taken and monitored. Optimistically this next wave will be completed by October 4th.”

Scratch took a breath. “Starting on Monday health care professionals will be required to submit fluid samples to area authorities to test for exposure, and maintain integrity of our medical support system. In addition new background screening procedures will be required, looking into known associations of those who have been infected. Refusal to comply may subject offenders to the loss of any license or practice that apply.

“Those who have had associations with suspected infected persons will be required to undergo a quarantine period, to monitor their progression and ensure their safety.”

“How is it that the individuals can be stripped of their title or practice for relation to someone with the disease? It seems that violates some law of fair practice,” a politician speaks up from the back. 

Dr. Scratch peered up under his eyebrows from the paper he was skimming off of. “It was part of a bill that was sent to congress last week. It was passed in the senate and we will know tomorrow if it passes house. We are primarily concerned about the progressive spread of the illness through communities, if it makes it into the home so to speak of our health care it leaves all those who enter at risk. Our social interactions cannot at this point threaten national safety.”

“And what of those who don’t know that the person they associate with is sick until after symptoms arise?”

“Then they fall into the category of suspected infected persons and must undergo the requirements for a full quarantine.” Scratch looked back down at his report, clearly feeling the topic was explained.

“Which are?” you look over your shoulder at whoever it is driving the questions. It’s hard to see in the dark, but it’s one of the men you listed under in a black suit and probably from Washington.

At this Scratch seems to become annoyed. “They must report to a secure quarantine facility and willingly submit to monitoring for a full incubation period. If someone is quarantined but they do not report a warrant for arrest will be filed and it will go to the authorities. But truthfully all that is required is to sit in a room alone for fourteen days and pee in a cup. It’s something that any self-respecting doctor could comply to.”

There is a brief break as he waits for another interruption, but there isn’t one. 

“If we can get the public mind informed and educated upon these procedures we can isolate and prevent outbreaks on this side of the barrier. Hopefully we won’t have another day twelve.

“This leads us into the next item of business, the plans for current and future containment. We welcome here with us today members of the military board, and presidential cabinet and are assured that this discussion will be recorded and used to advise the nation’s future.

“As was shown briefly in the presentation we have the real time report that the primary fence is completed and being monitored in thirty mile stretches every hour. Since its completion back on day 16 cases have been maintained completely on the interior of the boarder, and we can optimistically say that spread as we’ve seen through critically infected patients that result in lower incubation periods will be non-existent on quarantined ground.” As he continues you recognize the elements that had been discovered by your department’s work. It was pretty early on when it was established that person to zombie contact seriously decreased the incubation of the disease. In a particularly (1)hot host direct contact with bodily fluids could develop symptoms within hours. It wasn’t the only way that the disease spread, but it was the deadliest. 

“The ultimate success of the containment boarder project is critical to our future survival. Breaking the chain between direct contact with infected persons has slowed the spread of the virus dramatically. The next courses of action are to strengthen the line to ensure that the threat cannot walk across the border, and to initiate a cleansing of the infected country”  
The idea of cleansing had risen after the mini outbreak in Langley on day twelve. It had been quickly contained, and the facility it had risen in had done the smart thing and sealed the air shafts. After that, they quickly abandoned the idea of treating those who developed symptoms and ended the spread of the virus by, and this is quoting the reports, humanly euthanizing those with symptoms and those who had been treating them. The rest was accomplished by bathing the walls in bleach. 

In a small contained area it had been very controversial, but it had also worked. Appalling sure, but effective. When you change the circumstances to the southern half of the United States of America, the logistics just can’t cover it. The debate turns to reflect that daunting task, and a Director in the Office of Public Health speaks up “We can’t possibly expect to cover eleven states with an inch of chlorine bleach. Never mind the environmental consequences, there simply isn’t enough bleach.”

“There are other ways to denature protein,” one of the officers of Infectious Diseases speaks up. “The heat produced by a forest fire would be enough. Or it’s possible to produce more sustainable methods… perhaps UV lights mounted on construction vehicles. But this isn’t something that we can just build walls around and hope that it goes away.”

“Why not?” another voice spoke up from the back of the room. “At least until we can come up with an effective treatment plan, or even a vaccination or cure.”

Another suit and tie shifted in his seat and leaned forward to answer the point. “Our country will not survive a complete halt of trade for an extended period of time. The only way that the nation will open its boarders to the world will be after this disease is conquered.”  
Mituna leans into your ear and whispers “More like the only way the rest of the world will open its doors to this nation. You can’t tell me that shutting down all immigration and trade activities was voluntary on Washington’s part. That would be too heroic.”

“As well as the decision to cleanse for the greater good of humanity,” you whisper back. No, the motivation from Washington was purely economic. And though the United Nations had been planning on ways to support the west, twenty two days into the infection it is starting to seem like all of that will just remain plans. Big strong America—cocky, jocky, and abandoned by its peers.

“The President has already considered that there be a cleansing,” One of the uniformed military heads spoke up with an iconic rough baritone. “The pentagon is primed to accomplish it, even if it means destroying the heart of the plague with nuclear force. Of course, to actually use the land after it’s cleansed, we’re hoping there will be proof that things need not come to that.” That news comes as a bit of surprise to the rest of the room, it certainly is to you. It seems that there have been a few meetings off the books in the oval office.

It takes a moment before another voice speaks up. But then you’re glad that you recognize another head researcher from infectious diseases raise his pen. Reaching through your memory you’re pretty sure he headed the work on bacterial cases. “Director you must know that a decision to cleanse thousands of square miles can’t be reached with such limited knowledge. Surely we can wait until the results from the IV Department come through.” That would be your department.

Director Frieden leaned forward in his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s been impressed on us that there is a need for our decision on the matter. We’re not suggesting that a plan be drafted today. Scratch, if you’d continue to the heart of the issue.”  
“Yes of course. In order to progress our nation’s security we’ve been advised to make a final decision on ultimately to cleanse or not to cleanse. The rhetoric of how will be determined with the work of Dr, Uutella, but waiting until that time may be drastic. To keep congress moving it has been proposed that we draft a bill tonight, which will be passed and signed upon the conclusion of this meeting.”

The voice from Public Health gave a shout of outrage. “You can’t be serious! What we’re proposing is the ultimate death of anyone outside a quarantined area. We still haven’t even determined that there really aren’t any survivors!”

“And so what are we supposed to do, rome the wild south in HAZMAT looking for ‘munies? Talk about lack of resources,” The man from the pentagon scoffed.

But there was more than just one person in the room who objected to the idea. You weren’t even particularly pleased that they pulled you into it as the vanguard for method. But, it was too late to object verbally now, and there were plenty others already doing it for you. The small uproar is only calmed when Dr. Scratch breaks character and raises his voice.

“Gentlemen! Please!” The Silence that enters the room is stifling, and for some reason you can’t put a finger on it sends a foreboding shiver up your spine.

Scratch took another step directly under the spotlight, throwing his face into deeper shadow. “Perhaps I do need to remind us exactly where we stand. In the time since the outbreak we have researched 43 different compounds for their ability to treat this infection, without a single viable success. 17 individuals have been monitored from the discovery of their illness until their death within official walls, and not a single one experienced any kind of administered longevity. The truth is we don’t have anything to help a survivor with.” There are some considerable signs of shock around the room, but it doesn’t really register for you. The ice that dropped through you stomach kind of overshadowed that. _Did he really just announce that to the world?_ Up till now the work on the vaccination or cures had been strictly confidential. People had been fired for letting slip much less than what punctured this room. To prevent any kind of backlash the company had been deliberately tight lipped, but Scratch just ripped the curtain down right in front of the director. But the most disturbing thing is that Frieden said nothing. _Don’t they know the peril that puts us all in?_

But then the tide turns. The politicians that had previously been argumentative were making comments of finality, in favor of signing the bill. Researchers were listening and watching earnestly, looks of thoughtful consideration coming upon them. And then it starts to make sense. They needed the motivation to act, and though debate was supposed to be enough to stir the waters the director must have known a full confession might be necessary. But it doesn’t change the danger, not at all. If the cleansing bill doesn’t pass, or doesn’t pan out in some way this meeting will be a very black streak for the Center. And ultimately upon those who are directly responsible for the research.

There are a few more minutes of group consent, and then Scratch closes the meeting. You try to listen to it and dissect it, but the dread that filled you has left your ears ringing. As the lights come on bodies stand and shuffle notes into bags and binders, and the noise washes over you like waves as you remain stunned in your seat.

Mituna murmurs something to you about going, but your eyes are too busy boring a hole through the projector screen.

Then you remember something. Something really important. Something very significant, that makes you jump up and zig zag your way through the pockets of discussion that gathered in the aisles. As you approach the stage you have to wave and raise your hand to get his attention. “Dr. Scratch!” he looks up from buttoning his briefcase, and finishes a comment to the deputy director before turning to you. “Can you send me a copy of the presentation?”

“Of course I can.” He said, adjusting the fluorescent green tie around his neck.

“And can you include the footage?” you specify.

That makes him blink a couple of times, but he keeps the blank smile. “Yes I can. I will send those to you tonight.”

“Thank you.” 

 

 

Wordlessly the two of you return to the research floor, at a slower pace now, both digesting the conference. To some extent you are still too stunned to really see the paneled walls pass by like a treadmill, until your feet lead you to your office. You open the door and hold it open for Mituna to enter. He just stands in the space of your office, leaving the only box free chair for you.

You close the door and stand with him.

“So what did you think?” you say, breaking the silence. 

“I think that was thit thtorm in the making.” Colorful as always, but truthful. You’d come to respect him for it. Not the expletives, but the honesty. 

People wondered often why Mituna. There were other bright young kids to discover hidden in the dark corners of academia, practically begging for it. But you didn’t find Mituna there. He had lived the beginning of his life by the rules of society, which had treated his race badly. When the trolls had been incorporated into society for good, democracy had been a new challenge for their typically cast ruled social order. When all trolls were universally treated with repugnance, the authority in blood color lost its pallor. Of course the new political leaders, though not all high caste, were treated well in the democratic theatre, as well as anyone could have hoped for a race that was traditionally seen as barbaric. But that stigma is hard to beat. On the streets men always had the upper hand on trolls. It certainly wasn’t helped by small pockets of violent protest, mostly led by blue and fuscia bloods, the ones who had the most to lose through democracy.

But Mituna was a yellow blood. Less than halfway up the spectrum he didn’t hold much authority among his own kin, and was largely ridiculed by human children, both for his appearance, and his social disorder. When you found Mituna it was during your time investigating an outbreak of salmonella in the central states. He had been a lonely child outside the factory, you’d assumed he was just there doing whatever it is that kids do these days. After investigating the equipment and taking samples he spoke up and told you that what you were looking for wasn’t going to be in that factory, but a few miles up the road. Upon following his directions you were led to a different chicken factory, which was performing much lower than industry standards, and was operating on a forged lease.

That was when you knew that he was different.

After then you kept your eye on him, and began spending more and more time overlooking his studies. Over and over again, though you felt you were tutoring him, he would help you solve difficult cases in your work, sometimes without you having discussed them with him at all. There was a myth among trolls that yellow bloods were hereditary psionics, but it wasn’t until after meeting Mituna that you started putting any weight into troll lore. Since then many things that you wouldn’t have considered make a lot more sense with experience.  
He was more than a colleague to you; more perhaps even than just a friend. 

“I just can’t believe it. They’re going through with that bill. And they threw down the cards!” you shake your head and stagger to your office chair. It rolls backward slightly when you land in it, but you just remain limp, shaking your head.

“Oh, they did more than that.” Mituna fixes you with his eyes, which you hardly ever get a good look at under his unkempt hair. They’re captivating and odd, one bright cerulean blue and the other deep red, full of concern and resentment. “Callie, you know that they aren’t going to bear the weight of that announcement if it comes down hard on their heads. When the cleansing falls though they will blame it on the failure to find a cure. They made a noose all right, but the only neck that will be filling it if things go wrong is yours.”

His prediction hangs heavy in the air, but you know with dread that he’s right. The director had thrown the buck to Scratch, who then fastened the responsibility neatly upon your shoulders. When people go looking for a pariah, they’ll find one. And then they’ll find a lot more than they bargained for.

The horror terrifies you, and Mituna notices the effect it causes. It’s hard for you to be laid bare on the alter like this, but you can tell it’s even harder for him to watch it. In dismay you let him run, pull open the door and exit with words about getting the reports finished before leaving you in your office alone. He never was very good at consoling.

The weight and darkness hang on your shoulders. They knew exactly what they were doing, and it sickens you, how neatly they boxed you into a trap. A different person might run, cash in what this life was worth and split for Cuba. But it’s not you, It’s not who you are, quitting is not an option. And neither is surrendering. Yes this may end very badly, but only because you know that that is how it has to be; you will take the cage, and wear it with dignity.

And who knows, you may actually find a cure during this new stage of the battle. 

Determination gives you the strength to power through and you turn your chair back to the four monitors on the wall. These were the only thing that you requested from the department. Bringing back up the report you were working on, you lift it high to the top left screen, and then divert your attention a minute to your mail. There it is, sent ten minutes ago. You open the letter and download the attached file. Skimming through on fast forward you wish momentarily it were possible to get your hands on the unedited clips, but they were probably already vaulted away needing government sanction. No matter. The speed of skipping forward jumps past the dark images you were looking for, and you have to go back a little to start from the beginning of the clip. None of the other sections gave the impression of life; you have no doubt that was intentional. But these clips, that dark building with the bright floor, though it starkly illustrates the absence of life within the dark monoliths that remain of downtown Dallas, it marks something. Those lights didn’t come on on their own, and you’re willing to bet that the inky darkness surrounding them is evidence of a large grid blackout. But there they are, bright, light, evidence that somebody, somewhere turned them on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1, the term hot here is not used in the temperature sense. In the field of infectious diseases a pathogen like a virus exists in a host parasite relationship with the patient; as it reproduces within the host the virus’s population increases exponentially. That magnification of viral presence is referred to as hot, as in the viral activity is severe.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, again, this was written after a year gap. As much as I would like to think that wouldn't change the story at all, it probably has, and hopefully it's for the better. You'll have to decide! Enjoy~

**Roxy: Stay on Guard.**

Late afternoon shafts of sunlight lick through the gaps in the buildings like tongues of fire as the four of you make the way through fossilized traffic. The orange heat is fierce for early fall, and you shift your rifles’ shoulder strap to let the pink sweat stripe in your shirt breathe underneath. Although it’s late in the day it’s tough to keep poise. Even more so with the hangover grade headache you’ve been nursing the past couple of days. But you keep pace, and keep quiet. Complaintive jokes won’t be tolerated right now. 

Dirk leads the group away from the apartment complex at a quick clip, dragging Jake along by the shirt sleeve. Dirk had always been a coiled spring, but actually seeing him loose it was a bit of a shock. Not to mention he single handedly wrangled a zombie away from its intended target, which is just downright impressive, if not terrifying, with complete disregard for windows, and microscopic glass cuts that could’ve been contaminated. Like, you’re not going to lie, you always kind of figured he was a martial arts badass because he carried around a samurai sword and whatnot, but knowing something and then seeing the fire of unbridled rage in his eyes were two different things entirely. 

It makes jokes seem like a pretty bad idea right now.

It’s just, you expect a zombie to act like an animal, which, you’re sorry, but Jake is without a doubt a zombie. Fact. And you get that what you’re trying to do is kind of unprecedented, and you’re grateful for Dirk doing what he felt was necessary, but still. That was too close, for John, and for Jane. As you march behind him you keep your Rifle trained not in a resting position, but instead somewhere between the stumbling feet ahead. _It only takes a few degrees,_ you think, _a couple inches. He won’t go anywhere. I can’t let him._

The sun breaks out from behind a building, and you squint your eyes shut. Instead of black, you see Dirk holding Jake to the ground. With a shock you blink the image away and breathe down your apprehension. The ordeal had taken your friend and turned into something you couldn’t trust. You just wish you knew which one you were talking about. 

_Come on Roxy don’t be so hard on him,_ you think to yourself, not entirely convinced. Starting a conversation about Dirk’s overbearing behavior won’t exactly get anywhere anyway. You can’t just tell him things, he doesn’t listen. Just like he didn’t listen to your advice on dating Jake, just like he didn’t listen when you told him Jane had been hot for Jake for years, and just like he doesn’t listen every time you compliment his hair. But why should he? He’s gay. You’re not exactly on his radar. Or gaydar? Does it count as a gaydar if it’s a gay person detecting gay people? Probably. Or is that just insensitive? Also likely. You’re never mentioning that musing to anyone ever. 

You look back at Jane to make sure she’s behind you, and shift your rifle into a more comfortable position.

 

_***

**Dirk: Avoid Confrontation Like There’s Nothing Wrong At All.**

_Silence can be louder than shouting_ you think, pulling Jake along by the sleeve, weaving between cars. The lack of communication isn’t comfortable, it’s heavy. Awkward, but also deliberate. They don’t want to talk to you, and you sure as heck don’t have anything to say. Breaking that silence now would be a poor choice. Instead you replace words with purpose. It turns out you don’t have to apologize to survive. All of you are stuck together regardless; instincts pull you together through the streets.

The apartment complex is long behind, and the need to find another rest stop is top priority. It was never your intention to start this late. In less than forty minutes it would be dark again, and you were not going to be caught on the street at night. Too many things had gone wrong already. You don’t need to add a blind ambush to the list.

As you round a corner, you pull up short. The next street is completely blocked by an overturned semi-truck. Two trailers are hooked together like cars of a train, stretched from one building to the opposite. At first it looks like an accident, but then you look harder and see how several hundred feet were cleared, and track the skid marks on the ground. The black rubber marks at the far end form a burnout, and the arcing tire marks culminating at the truck aren’t frantic. It wasn’t an accident. Someone overturned that truck and blocked the street on purpose. From where the cab lies on its side nose sticking in the front window of a pizza parlor to where the final trailer had gouged out part of the bricks the truck formed a perfect perimeter. One could only cross it by climbing the behemoth, but even then it had also clipped a power line in its slide, so you’d risk electrocution from the wires draped and hanging from the downed traffic lights.

You had to admit someone did a good job. 

“Uuhm so are we going over it?” Roxy says, bringing you out of your thoughts. 

“No,” you say, you don’t really want to know why someone had to block a whole street. “Let’s try the next block.”

You cross the intersection in a straight line, and then start weaving through cars again. The silence settles on the group, the brief exchange too banal to lift your mood. Just find a spot to rest. Just do that.

Then the street in front of you is punctured with an arrow. 

Can’t you just do one thing without incident?

“Look at that! It’s Strider!”

Apparently not.

Jane and Roxy pull up on your left and right, and you step in front of Jake protectively. You trace the arrow’s shaft to a window on the third floor. It’s hard to see clearly, but you know the voice enough. You don’t need to see his jelled dyed hair, or crooked horns to know who it is. 

“Dirk do you know them?” Roxy says, shifting the rifle beside you.

“Uh,” you hesitate. The post apocalypse is not, in fact, the best time to have your past come to call. “Unfortunately, yeah.”

But soon you see you’re mistaken. The Troll steps out onto the fire escape, and leans on the railing, mouth wide in a jagged smile. He is flanked by more trolls, one particularly shiny with perspiration has a bow and arrow trained on your group. “Here wwe are, holed up here—and look wwhat saunters up to our door! Provvidence sure shines bright doesn’t it?”

“Where’s Cronus?” You shout to the figure above you. He bears a striking resemblance, but the stutter is a bit different. Unlike the sharkish greaser troll you remember this one wears a scarf, and has a cigarette sprouting from the end of a long black wand-like holder.

“That old tool? He took a divve off the deep end, if you knoww wwhat I mean. Couldn’t take a lame apocalypse. I got tired of his wwining, so had a friend convvince him to drive into a wwall.” He pauses to suck on the stick and then breaths a smoky _nyeh._ “He made a nice blockade though. Probably the only thing my dumb ass “brother” evver did right.”

Oh. You remember him now. “Eridan. Last time I saw you, you were just a little snot in a scarf.”

The troll stands up a little straighter, fin-like ears flaring. “Yeah wwell, I didn’t forget your stupid sunglasses. Or wwhat you owwe.”

Jane gives you a sideways look, somewhere between doubt and disgust. 

In your defense it had been a long time since you ran anywhere with this crowd, and even then there was never any unity between you and them. Trolls band together in gangs to form their own circle of authority outside human law. The drugs and people trafficking isn’t something you agree with really, let alone the violent harassment they throw around to collect protection money. And to be truthful as a sixteen year old you didn’t give it much thought. You were more concerned with your mother running out and leaving you to take care of a ten year old, with a drunk who barely passed as a father. If you wanted to have a hot shower, it was up to you to get it. The gangs offered easy money, and turning a blind eye kept food on the table. That and with time you became capable of a lot worse than any troll.

Something someone with two parents and a college fund wouldn’t understand.

You take a step forward avoiding her eyes, “I don’t owe you anything. I never did.”

“Not according to the recent account revvisions. Turns out Cronus sucked at running a business, and there’s a shit ton of interest he nevver collected.” Eriden taps the cig on the rail, dripping ash. “So I figure you should pay up.”

Now you’re just exasperated. “I’m not giving you a dime. It doesn’t mean a damn anymore anyway. Take a look around!” You gesture at the chaotically empty street. “Pushing and shoving won’t bring the value of a dollar back!”

The troll heaves a sigh and stares you down as he takes a drag. He blows it out his nose slowly, smoke curling mysteriously from the skin on his neck. He leans forward over the railing, “Maybe I should be a little clearer. Equius?”

Another arrow lets fly. This time though, you’re ready. You draw your sword and cut through the shaft in one fluid movement. The fletching spins to the ground, the head veers end over end over Jane’s shoulder. Then she reacts, throwing her hands to her face.

You round on them, glaring up as they cackle at Jane. You think about whether or not a fight over this is worth it. “I think we’re done here,” you say, and nudge Roxy. “Come on, let’s go.”

Making sure Jane is ahead of you the group crosses the street. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” 

You try to look for all the world like you’re ignoring the Troll and his circle. In reality you’re using the windows across the street to watch him as you go. Eriden has stopped laughing. “Hey! You’re not leavving!”

“Watch me,” you say under your breath. Your hand tightens on the handle of your drawn sword.

He is shouting at the other trolls now, and two of them leap over the edge of the fire escape. Then Eriden retrieves a rifle from the window. At least you think it’s a rifle. He takes aim and fires the weapon.

At the report you cover Roxy and throw Jane to the ground. But the shot isn’t anywhere near you. You look up to see a cable embedded in the building above. The cable sways, and the rest of the trolls zip line to the ground in front of you.

Eriden takes a second to get his footing, and then takes a long double hooked shaft and clicks it into what you guess would be a harpoon gun. Huh. 

“Alright. Wwe wwere talking about payment.” He says, aiming the business end at you.

“I’m Sorry; I’m having a hard time taking you seriously with that thing.” You say, gesturing toward the gun with your sword. 

“You’re wwha-?” His eyes screw shut in consternation. “Just shut up Strider! You’re surrounded, and you owwe me. I think ten grand.”

“What did you pull that out of your ass? I’m not gonna pay you.” 

“Like Fuck you wwon’t.” He alters his aim and pulls the trigger. 

The harpoon flies left, and it takes you a little off balance to chop it off its course toward Jake’s face. For the first time all the attention is on him. There’s a moment of suspended belief, and then the group explodes.

“Shit! Fuck! It’s dead!” Eridan fumbles to reload as you readjust, just in time to knock another shot at Jake out of the air. The metal barbs clatter on the pavement. The circle of trolls grows wider.

“I alwways thought you wwere nuts Strider, but you must be out of your fucking mind!” Eridan says, drawing closer to a larger troll with an automatic. “Wwalking around wwith a zombie. That’s certifiable, that is.”

You tense up, preparing to defend Jake, but then stop. Maybe you’re going about this the wrong way. 

You don’t holster your sword, but reach back and grab Jake by the hand. Then you take a couple steps toward Eridan. His group scoots back as if repelled. A curly horned troll grabbed the shoulders of his neighbor to use him as a shield. 

“You caught me, I have a pet zombie.” You say, and pause to give a little jerk towards the nearest troll. They scramble backwards and fall over the hood of a sedan. “And unless you want me to let him take a chunk out of you, you’re going to let us go over there.” You gesture with your sword to where the street T’s off in two directions. 

“Shit he is just leading it by the hand!” Eriden isn’t really talking to you anymore, not really leading anymore. One of the trolls in the line ahead takes aim and fires a revolver. You notice with just enough time to yank Jake’s arm and pull him out of range. The momentum carries him in front of you, and you have to pull him back into you to just keep him upright. But to the trolls it looks like you’re restraining him. 

“Do you think I’m joking? Tell you’re thugs to cease fire!” You yell, holding Jake up more than you’re holding him back.

“Stop firing! Do you wwant that thing to go berserk?” Eriden’s voice has climbed a few levels, which they might all find embarrassing if they weren’t all terrified of Jake. As you pull even with them they’ve parted so far there’s a car’s distance between you and them. 

“You knoww what,” Eriden says “if you wwant a zombie you can havve one! In fact, I hope it bites you. It’ll be some sorta karma for blowwing me off.”

You wait for Jane and Rox to catch up, and then lead the group away.

“If I never see you again I’ll take it you died a horrible and painful death Strider!” He shouts at your backs.

For a little while you only hear the sound of your feet as they watch your group leave. But then as you near the next intersection Jake stops dead. The abrupt halt yanks your arm at the shoulder, and you almost lose your footing. 

“What the—come on Jake,” you say, pulling on his hand. But he resists, instead shuffling back in the other direction. If you didn’t know better, you’d say his blank expression wasn’t so blank. He looked scared.

“Let’s go,” you say, pulling harder. Instead he falls to his knees increasing resistance. “What is the deal?” 

“Uhm, Dirk,” Roxy calls back at you.

“What?” you say, trying really hard not to lose your patience. 

“We need to go” she says.

“I know but Jake—“

“Dirk Run!” she says, pushing you from behind. You stumble over Jake and take a look over your shoulder. 

There across the Intersection was a convenience store absolutely full of people. No, not people. Bodies. Writhing screaming pounding on the glass, they’re a horde of zombies. 

The glass shatters and their moaning yells become fully audible. 

“Shit!” you say, and start shoving Jake ahead of you back down the street. He gets up with speed for once, and the two of you follow Jane and Roxy back through the tangle of cars. 

The trolls are still in the street, picking up stray arrows and harpoons from the conflict just a minute earlier. 

“What the hell?” one of them shouts and throws himself against a van at the sight of you and Jake. 

“Move!” you yell, “Get out of the street!” 

Trolls may be a cultural pain in the ass, but nobody deserves to be blindsided by what’s behind you. The rest of them get the message pretty quickly, a dark mass of ravenous zombie fury is hard to miss. Soon they’re running beside you, jumping hoods in a race to live. 

When the line of cars breaks at the intersection you yell ahead, “Rox! Head for the semi!'

She doesn’t look back, but you see her grab Jane’s elbow and pull her out of the mob race. They sprint through the turning lane and head for the overturned truck around the corner.

The trolls head through the intersection. It was fine with you to part without words. You take Jake and head after the Girls.

Before you get there though, there’s a rise across the street. Agonizing screams are followed by the trolls doubling back; a smaller group of zombies had formed down the road and were closing in. Some were huddled over struggling gray limbs. Then the screams stop. 

You don’t have time. You push Jake at the truck, and then start to climb the tangle of its undercarriage after him. Behind you the troll with the automatic open fires on the larger mob. You briefly hear their group shouting strategy. The chaos is too close. 

Roxy appears above you, on the door of the cab. “Get Jake!” you shout. He’s managed to climb halfway up the truck, but his arms were trembling, slowing you down. She grabs his shirt by the collar, and like a cat with a kitten by the nape, pulls him up beside her. Then she turns back to you.

Without Jake in the way you climb much faster. She reaches out, and you grasp her hand for the last bit. At the last second, a force slams into your lower half. You shout at the sharp pain of having your knees rammed into the truck’s undercarriage, and you feel something grasping at your legs. In a panic you kick, trying to lose the dead weight. 

“Help! Take me wwith you!” A voice shouts. Eriden. 

His effort to climb the truck is frantic. It pulls you down, you slip on an axel and loose grip of Roxy’s hand. 

“Let me go!” you shout, and kick wildly. He’s determined though, and pulls at your clothing, hanging on. Frustration builds in your chest, this troll is going to get you killed.

“You can’t let them get me, you can’t do this to me!” Eriden shouts back, gripping at your shoulders now. “You’ll kill me!”

“Hurry up just bring him with you!” Roxy yells down.

All you can think of is his ragged grin mocking Jane. He doesn’t deserve it.

You round on Eriden, and give him an elbow in the chest. “Get off!” In the seconds that he stumbles back you reach further up the truck. Then he’s on you again.

Suddenly the weight gest a whole lot heavier. Eriden Screams. He’s shouting at you, pleading with you. There’s a bang near your knee, a palm pounding the truck’s gas tank. You panic, hanging on part of the iron framework, knuckles white. The weight is pulling your shoulders out of joint. Eriden’s hands tear at your shirt, and your fingers start slipping. Roxy Screams something at you, aiming her rifle down at you. For a Second your heart drops further, staring the barrel in the face. You squint your eyes shut and hold on. 

Suddenly the shot sounds, and the weight is torn from you. In the split second before the mob can recoil you tear at the truck, scrambling up to the cab. Roxy fires another shot and you look back.

Your stomach decides you’re an unclean vessel and seems to disappear entirely, leaving something cold and angular in its place. Two of the zombies lay motionless at the foot of the vehicle, while Eriden struggled further and further away. The writhing mass devours him, jostling so much you can’t even see his body. Shaking, you tear yourself away from the horror, you give Roxy a little nudge, to break her stare too. She shakes her head, then shudders, and with shaky legs climbs down the other side. 

You go to follow only to stop short. There’s a body beneath your feet. In the window of the cab silently unaware, lies the shadowy form of the Troll you knew. “Cronus,” you gasp, and blink. A dark Purple stain radiates from a fracture in the windshield, and you’re surprised when you’re heart jerks. Eriden. Something darkens inside of you. Cronus will never know how close his brother died.

Jane is in the street, anxiously bouncing on her toes, waiving her arms for the three of you to hurry up. The mob is only slightly muffled behind the overturned truck. Jake is still frightened, turning at each new rise from the crowd. It’s time to go.

You put your hand on the hood of the truck. Just for a second. 

Then you turn and run down the street.

 

**Dirk: Find a Place to Rest, With Feeling.**

It’s another five blocks before you find a suitable stopping point. It’s not an apartment, but an emptied out second story rental space, probably last used as an art gallery, or a knick-knack store of some kind. There’s a few things strewn around here and there, but it was relatively in-tact, and had fewer bloodstains than the other buildings around. You’d prefer it to many of the residencies in this part of town; too many had fallen to poor management, and drug circles prior to the outbreak. Now they would be dangerous, too much potential for vagrant circles to have evolved into a brain hungry variety. 

Jane huffed about at the empty wood floors for a while, until you searched the hall and found a discarded mattress. It was nothing fancy, but something to sleep on anyway. After you set it in one corner and gave a tired huff, she set her things down and sat against the wall. Satisfied you turn around and come up short from Roxy’s stare. Or glare rather. 

She folds her arms and walks out of the flat into the hallway. 

You heave another sigh. You’re not looking forward to this. But you’ve been avoiding confrontation for a couple of hours. Prolonging things will just make them worse. So you take her invitation and follow her into the hall. 

“What.” You say, breaking the silence. You lean on the doorframe.

She takes a moment to come up with a reply, watching you warily. Something you haven’t seen her do for a few weeks. Sobriety brings out the best in her. 

“I can’t believe you!” she shouts. You draw back, and steel yourself. “You-! You just let that guy die! You pushed him to his death!” 

Defensively, your mouth hangs open as you try to think of what to say. “He tried to shoot Jane in the face!”

“And so you kick him into a bunch of zombies?!” she yells, and takes a step closer. “How does that make any sense??”

“He was going to get us both killed!” you take a step too. 

“You could have helped him up!” She’s in your face now.

“I did what I had to do!” you yell.

“No you didn’t you had a chance—“

“How huh? HOW?! What was I supposed to do?”

“I could have held them off! But you were kicking him!”

“He was pulling me off the truck!”

“YOU KILLED HIM DIRK!” She screams, a tear escaping her burning eyes. “You killed him and you didn’t even try!”

The tears catch you off guard. Your hands are balled in fists and shaking. “He was just a slimy troll Rox.”

She pulls back as if slapped. Her eyes search yours. “So that’s it then? Some shitty troll, doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t” you say, struggling with words. Your tongue is in angry knots. “You have no idea.”

“You’re right. I don’t, I don’t have any idea who you are.” she snorts. Then she changes her mind. “Actually… I do. You’re a murderer.”

Your heart turns to ice. Numb, you fall back into the wall. You look away, afraid that she’ll see something, see through you. See a part of you that you were afraid of. “You don’t mean that,” You murmur.

“How did you know that gang?” She asks, choking. “Have you killed people?”

The ice gets colder. Images come to you, from the streets after the outbreak. Some were zombies. Some weren’t quite. You look up at her. “Only when I’ve had to. You watched me do it.” 

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She says, glaring down at you. 

You’re cornered. The first one was the worst. Three trolls to twist your arm and make sure you finished the job. You weren’t sure because there were never details, but he was probably just a drug distributer. Fell behind on his payments. Fell out of luck. Over time there wasn’t anyone making you do it. It was just you.

“How many?” She asks, pressing you.

You stare at the floor and don’t say a word. 

“Why won’t you say anyting?” she quivers. And steps back. 

You look up, trying to keep a straight face. It’s hard. Really hard. It probably comes off as a glare, but you’re not sure what you feel right now. Hatred? Guilt? Justification?

You take a breath and stand up. The steps it takes to stand in front of her are calming. It unnerves her, and a small part of you twinges in regret. An even smaller, darker part feels satisfied. Knowing that makes your voice break. “I’ve only ever done what I felt like I had to do.”

She grits her teeth, “…Who are you?”

You stand up to her searching eyes, and sigh. You look down. “Jake knew.”

When she doesn’t say anything else, you breathe out and step toward the door. Then you pause, shivering. There is a rift that didn’t used to exist. Solid like a brick wall. 

But then you consider it. The wall always existed for you, but they couldn’t see it. Now the bricks were staring Roxy in the face.

Shakily you breathe. “I’d understand if you wanted to part ways. I probably would too.” 

In the darkness of the hallway you leave her standing. 

 

**Roxy: Freak Out Just A Little.**

It’s some time before the terror and anxiety of confrontation starts to leave your system. In that time, you had slid down the wall in the hall, to rest your head on your knees. 

All this time. A year and a half. You think back, trying to see the signs in your memory. Was there any point that he let it slip? When you saw in his step the confidence of a killer? When the smile at lunch turned sinister? 

You feel so stupid. You should have known, nobody knows how to swordfight these days, and even then nobody has such a familiarity with how a blade cuts through matter to make it an art. Those just aren’t skills you practice for a rainy day. Or a zombie apocalypse in this case.

When your breath stops catching in your throat and you feel like you can see out your eyes again, you brave the room. 

You walk in, and see Jane on the mattress, wide eyed. Jake is prone on his stomach, next to the makeshift bed, face towards the wall. Jane gives him a sideways look, but then looks back up at you. For all the world they look like a couple of kids hiding from fighting parents. 

“Where did he go?” You ask her, on edge.

She points at the window. It’s closed, and he’s sitting to the side on a small shingled ledge. _He can stay out there,_ you think, _It’s warm enough._ Plus you don’t want him in here.

You sit down on the mattress next to Jane.

“I can’t believe it.” you say.

“Neither can I.” she says. And then she adds, “Did he really push him?”

“Yeah.” You say.

You sit in cold dark silence. Jake heaves a sigh on the floor. 

“What do we do now?” Jane asks.

You look out the window. You watch as Dirk drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know,” you say.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize to the language gods for using google translate. I'm working with someone to make it correct, so what's there right now is more of a placeholder. I hope. I don't want it to stay that way.

**Dirk: Maybe Try Feeling Some Remorse For Once.**

For a long time the night is quiet. The street below is empty of life, a stillness settling through the stagnant air. Without lights it gets a lot darker than normal, something that you thought you’d gotten used to, but then again, this is your first night outside. The bricks behind you stay warm from the heat of sunset, and through the patchy sky you can see stars. 

_Jake would have liked it._

But for you it’s foreign. Unfamiliar. Distant. It makes the emptiness inside you only seem deeper. 

Despite yourself the events of the day run over and over in your mind. From the baking fiasco, to John, to Jake, to Eriden, to Roxy. Over and over. Highlighting everything you did wrong. 

It was a mistake to wait so long to leave. If you had just gone in the morning, a lot of stuff could have been avoided. Mistake one. 

Getting so used to Docile Zombie Jake was mistake number two. You should have known that he was going to turn violent at one point or another. Letting him slide out of focus in the kitchen was your fault. If you’d been watching him, he wouldn’t have gotten ahold of Jane. 

Speaking of, you look over your shoulder for a second to confirm what you expect: Jake was out on the floor, and Roxy was propped up for first watch, rifle ready. She looks up at you when you move, but quickly looks away to Jake, ignoring you. She’s got it covered.

Mistake number three, generally being an asshole. Snapping at John, snapping at Jane and Roxy, snapping at a goddamn rabbit, snapping at everybody. _Dear self: you’re a dick._

And then Eriden. Why did you kill him? Roxy’s right you didn’t have to. It was selfish, and stupid. And too much like you used to be. Too many hours too late, you start to feel sick to your stomach. It wasn’t self-defense, and you know it. Sure it wasn’t by the sword, but that’s almost worse. There’s no honor in that kind of death since he wasn’t given the respect of a fair fight. 

That kind of animalistic sacrifice doesn’t even satisfy your weird desire for revenge. Now he and his semi-related-older-counterpart are both dead, while the anger inside you still burns. Re: not a part of you that you like very much.

After a while your eyes start to sting, and you realize that you’ve been staring pretty hard into the middle distance. You rub your face in your hands, and try to convince yourself the watery eyes are not tears. 

Roxy and Jane must hate you. The thought causes a tightness in your chest, making it hard to breath. It’s surprising how much it hurts. It’s been a long time since you’ve had people who probably cared about you. You’d thought you’d gotten used to being alone, but the reality dawns on you that you had had real friends. And now you might not.

You bite your fingers and let out a low growl, to push the frog out of your throat. Then you heave a sigh. It’s time to let it go, let the past be the past. Tomorrow you can try to do something to prove to them you aren’t a hopeless fuckup, but right now you have to stop beating yourself up for it.

You pull your feet up and cross them comfortably. You practice a few meditation techniques to try to get your mind to slow down. You focus on your breath, close your eyes, and count your heartbeat. After a while, you stop twitching, and your stomach even settles a little. 

Focusing on your breath makes you think of the ocean. The rushing air, mixed with crashing waves, shifting swirling. It makes you feel very tired. It seems like you listen to the sound for a long time. It’s when you can feel yourself start to slip into that in-between before sleep that the noise changes. It grows louder. The in and out from a shoreline starts to mix in weird ways. There’s no break in the waves now, just a flurry of crashing and rushing, like they’re being driven by a storm deep at sea. 

You can actually feel the spray on your face, and it shocks you awake. You’re sitting on a roof, your apartment’s roof, but in the middle of the ocean. 

You jump up and turn around. The wind is blowing so forcefully from the south that you have to lean into it. Water pelts you from all sides. In seconds you’re so wet you feel it in your bones. 

Wiping water from your eyes you search the horizon, first in one direction, then you spin around, and around confused. There’s just the roof, and then nothing. Water. Churning angry dark water. 

You run to the concrete wall rimming the edge, but then jump back shielding your eyes as a wave crashes against the building, spray drenching you in an explosion of water. When you open your eyes, you realize something had been washed up, floating in the drink as it drained from ports in the roof and wall. Stepping closer you see it’s a body. 

“Hey!” you try to shout above the wind. “Hey are you Alright!?” you reach forward and roll them over. Seeing his face you jump back, the sightless eyes and bloodstained chest giving you a shock. But you don’t recognize him. 

You take a better look at him, and notice his chest is punctured neatly with a single hole from the blade. The shirt flaps in the wind, hiding and revealing the wound. As you watch, the fabric straightens, and you remember. That shirt. “Blood Brothers”. You’d aimed for the center of the “O” in brothers like a bullseye. This Troll was your first kill. 

You start to feel sick as the building sways beneath your feet. Walking around him you hesitate to look in the water. 

The wind beats your hair flat, and you suck in a breath. The water is violent, rolling against the storm, uneven surface and shadows making it all the harder to see in the rain, but you see enough. Shapes floating in the water. Some faces you can remember, some have no names, and some, don’t really have faces, rotting zombie flesh robbing their identities. 

Unnerved you cup your hands to your face and yell out to the water. “HEY!”

You wait watching, and then again “HEY ANYBODY OUT THERE?”

Again. “HELLO!”

You run to another edge, rain spattering your side. “HEY!”

Then you stop, breath stolen from your lungs. There, in the water, a limp shape floats face up, blonde hair pulled by the water in a strange halo. Rox. 

“no,” you say, and then another catches your eye. Jane. Then Jake.

There’s another shape too. Younger, white hair stark against the black ocean. Dave.

“no, no, NO!” you shout and back away from the edge. You run your hands through your hair and then shout at the sky. “AAAH! NO! WHY? WHO WOULD DO THIS??”

In a daze you let the wind spin you around. When it feels like you’re gonna fall, you run smack into somebody. The surprise of it is enough, but when you see his face, hair spiked to the wind, and his glasses black and pointed—

“DIRK” Roxy shouts. Hearing her shout your name wakes you up, but just calling it waking up doesn’t really cut it. It’s more like being yanked upside down by your heels and then instantly inverted into a sitting position. It honestly gives you vertigo. Add to that a sensation of rain soaking you beyond your dream and you’re pretty damn scared.

“WHAT!?” you shout, bracing yourself against the brick as you remember you really are on a roof, just a different one. 

She leans out the window to grab your arm. “It’s raining you nut job! Get in here!”

Realizing this is true, you scramble inside. She then shuts the window at the growing grey of the dawn. She looks at you as you stand there dripping and shivering. 

She measures you. “What did you think I wouldn’t let you in? I’m not heartless!”

You rub your arms and slide to the floor, trying to bring back some semblance of warmth. “I was asleep... I think,” you say.

“In the rain?” she asks incredulous.

You just shrug. You’re kind of glad all water looks the same, since you’re not actually sure if you’re sweating or crying. You sit in a puddle on the floor.

She walks away, and then comes back to drop a lump of fabric in your lap. “Here. Stop looking so wet. You’re making me forget how mad I am.” 

You open your eyes and see it’s a jacket, not one of yours, or theirs, but it’s clean. You use it to dry your face and hair. Then you take off your shirt and toss it to the side, and put it on. The shirt lands on the ground with a ‘sop’. Then you curl your legs up and start rubbing. 

“What time is it?” you ask through chattering teeth. 

Jane checks her wristwatch. “Seven thirty.” 

“Really?” you look back up at the window. “It’s so dark. How long has it been raining?”

She shrugs. 

“Off and on for a while, but really hard for only about twenty minutes,” Roxy says her back to you. She’s putting things together in her bag. She zips it up and throws a strap over her shoulder. 

“You were awake the whole night?” you ask, surprised.

She flips her hair out from under the strap. “I had a lot on my mind.”

If you could feel any more like a literal wet blanket, you would. You start to stand. “look—” 

“First, let me get something straight,” she cuts you off. “Just because civilization as we know it has collapsed, doesn’t make murder any more okay.”

You flinch a little but your shivers cover it. “I don’t—”

“ _I_ ” she continues, elongating the syllable over your words “am especially not okay with it. And we think it’s best if we go separate ways. After we get through Dallas.” She looks back at Jane who nods. “I just don’t know this city that well, and there’s safety in numbers in the city. But after that…” she trails off.

You look between them, and nod. There’s that hope dashed. 

“What about Jake?” you ask.

They look to his shoulders barely rising and falling as he slept. 

Roxy answers. “You’re the one who wanted to look for a cure. He’s you’re responsibility.”

You swallow and nod again. 

For a little while you stand there while they pack bags feeling lost. Then, you pick up your sopping shirt, wring it out, and go to find your backpack. 

Today’s going to be a long day.

 

**Dave: Add Some Art to That Graffiti.**

“Dave!” John says turning back to you. “Hurry up! We’re gonna leave you behind!”

“Just a minute,” you say, not particularly rushed. “I just gotta finish this…”

You finish with a long sweep from your chalk, and then stand back to admire your handiwork. As it was a particularly entertaining pass time of yours, defacing graffiti could not be left for later. Somehow ruining spray painted tags gives a kind of ironic justice for the building that had to bear the shit in the first place. When you happened upon the crude Aquarius gang stamp complete with the signature waves, you couldn’t help but convert it into a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff cameo. 

They relent, and come back to take a look. John snickers, covering his mouth. 

“Ah, another masterpiece.” Rose appraises. 

“Dave!” Jade says, and gives your shoulder a shove. 

Well, it isn’t polite, but when was anything polite funny? Sweet bro and Hella Jeff are surfing the troll’s adapted sign, which is pouring forth from a unicorn’s cock. In the foreground a poorly drawn troll screams in either offense or awe, it’s up to the viewer’s discretion.

“Okay we can go now,” you say, pocketing the chalk and leaving the mural behind. 

“Where do you come up with that stuff?” Jade asks catching up.

“What you never ruined coloring books with fart bubbles and expletives?” you ask in return. “I thought every kid did that.”

“…you’re weird Dave,” She says.

You just shrug it off. 

For a while none of you say anything. They walk quickly, but you can’t bring yourself to use the energy. As a result they keep pausing for you to catch up.

After some time you notice something. “Where are all the zombies? You would think that this wasn’t an apocalypse.” 

John shrugs. “Maybe they’re not hungry?” he says.

But then the clouds break, and the rain falls in large drops. The girls scream, and dash toward the sidewalk, where the buildings provide a little overhang. You and John follow them, and the four of you huddle together as water starts to pour from overflowing gutters above. 

“Maybe they don’t like rain?” Jane says. 

“Who knows,” you say. “I’m just glad we aren’t wet, and being chased by zombies.”

The four of you wait a few minutes, watching the rain from the little shelter. When the wind starts to pick up a little it blows the water under the overhang. You hop to another awning, and try the door to the building. It’s locked. 

Then you lean out and look down the road. East downtown isn’t the most familiar, but you think you know where you are. 

You look at Rose. “Hey, I think the overpass is just down the road, if we run we can wait this cloudburst out.” 

She, John and Jade nod. 

The four of you brace yourselves, John pulls up his hood, and Rose pulls a scarf over her ears. Then you break cover. 

It’s not a short jaunt, there’s probably a quarter mile to the gray suspended highway. But you pick up the pace, keeping up with the others easily. At the intersection you run straight across, between bumpers. The traffic lights sway a little in the weather, the creaking noise it makes seems loud in a place that used to cover it easily. 

At the corner you continue along the sidewalk, jumping to avoid the puddle at the curb. John crashes through it behind you, and you catch some of the spray. 

“Jees!” you say.

“Sorry,” you hear him say.

Down the block you jog, feeling water run down your back. You watch as you run past the last mirrored high rise, and see your group run through a warped rain-world. The parking lot beyond feels too open and spacious, exposed without some building for cover. Almost there, you pick up the pace as you run through an off ramp, one of the only car-free streets you’ve seen. 

As you hit the grass in the median, you ease off, puffing and loping as you get to the concrete pillars of the overpass. Together, you collapse in the limited shelter and breathe. 

“Yay.” Jade says. 

The rest of you pant while the rain falls beyond the shade. It’s cold, an odd change since yesterday was so warm. But you’re not complaining. It’s kind of nice to not feel like it’s boiling all the time. 

For a while you wait, the rain pounding away. Then it starts to ease off, and in just a few minutes, has blown over altogether. Just another cloudburst in the south.

But it makes you wonder. If you’re going further north, at this time of year as the weather changes it could put you in danger of some serious storms. You’re guessing, with the cities power pretty well shot, there’s not a lot of chance things like tornado sirens will still be working. It would suck majorly to survive a deadly genocide only to get trashed by Mother Nature. 

But for now, the weather isn’t bad. The clouds aren’t green enough for you to be worried. 

When it’s over, you get up and brush off the grass. “Onward?” you ask no one in particular.

As you cross underneath the rest of the freeway, you catch a look at a street sign. Main Street. Huh. This side of the road is considerably older than downtown, the high rises are now all behind, and the brick buildings here are all one or two stories. Powerlines crisscross intersections, and tennis shoes are hooked over them here and there. Even without the brooding emptiness, you can tell it’s a rough neighborhood. 

As you walk you talk about random shit to cross your mind. Like how much dog pee do you think that hydrant has seen? Did people really live in these apartments? What kind of tattoo would you get if there was someone here who could do that? 

“A Dark Wizard, just to piss my mom off.” Rose says.

“I don’t know” John says. Then he grins. “I’d get a moustache. And then when I can grow one I’d cut it in the shape of the moustache. Then when it grays, I can shave it off. Permastache.”

“I’d probably do some kind of crappy drawing. Right on my bicep so everyone can see it all the time,” You say. “And then when Macho dudes with shark-bear-pig tat sleeves ask me why I have a child’s Microsoft paint drawing on my arm I’d just stare them down and be like, stone-faced, right? ‘ _I_ drew that.’” 

It makes them laugh. The corner of your mouth curls up

“I already have one.” Jade says quietly.

It shocks you out of the joke. “Wait, what, really?” you ask. “Where?”

“On my foot!” she smiles, and stops on the sidewalk to pull off her shoe. Sure enough, she’d gotten a paw print in ink on the top of her foot. Looking closer you can see it’s not just a vector print, but the artist had put the gentle cracks and wear in the pads. 

“I got it after Bec died. He used to follow me everywhere I went, and I wanted to remember him.” She rubs the paw with her thumb. “Now I can take him with me, and he’ll walk where I walk.”

“…Wow Jade, that is adorably touching.” You say, and she smiles up at you while she puts her shoe back on.

“Jade’s is the best Idea.” John says. 

“Yeah.” 

The four of you continue. The conversation wanders. You get bored. 

Then you notice a building that’s under construction, scaffolding scaling the front two stories. It makes you think about John’s story from the other night.

“Hey, do you think I can jump to that from that car over there?” you ask.

Rose gives you a sideways look.

“There’s a coke saying you can’t.” John says.

“Make it an AJ and you’re on.” You say.

Rose rolls her eyes at Jade, who shrugs. 

You shrug your sword’s scabbard over your shoulder, and hand it to John. Then cautiously walk across the street, looking around. Luck has been on your side so far, but that doesn’t mean it will hold. Sometime today you’ll probably see a zombie, but for now the street is still.

You measure the car and the jump. You probably got it. Well, it’s been a while since you’ve done anything acrobatic, but hey, muscle memory is a thing, right? 

When you’re a couple steps from the hatchback, you start a measured run. It’s just like track and field. No biggie. 

You go for an altered high jump, running in an arc toward the front bumper. When you get there, you leap onto the hood, and without losing momentum continue up the windshield. On the roof you launch yourself, rolling over your back shoulder to complete the turn. You clear the bars of the scaffold prone, and pull your knees up and over to roll through the landing. It’s not perfect, the noise the scaffold makes when your shoulder lands sounds harsh, but you get up and shake it off. 

“Yeah! Did you see that? I had tons of room.” You say, leaning on the bars. They creak at the sudden use. “You owe me an AJAYYAAA—” 

The boards slip from their hold and fall out from under your feet. The wet bars slip through your hands, and you drop one floor, and then two as the ground gives way. All you know is it gets really loud and dark. Then the bottom knocks the wind out of you. 

You gape like a fish for a minute, unable to move. 

“DAVE!”

“Dave?”

“Oh my god he’s dead.” 

“Augh,” you manage, and then cough on the dust in the air. 

“What was that?”

“’m still alive.” You choke.

“…you owe me a coke.” John says.

“John!” you hear Jade slap his jacket. “Dave are you okay?”

Leaning on your elbow you check. Toes still move, and padding your torso everything feels in place. Despite what it hurts like you’re pretty sure nothing’s broken. “Yeah I think so,” you shout up.

“Dave, that was really stupid.” Rose says. 

“I love you too,” you say, getting up.

In the darkness you fumble around, and pick up your aviators. Don’t want to leave those down here. Then you pad down your clothes, puffing up clouds of dust. You straighten and take a look around.

It’s hard to see much. Even with a gaping hole in the sidewalk above it’s dark. It takes some time for the dust to clear enough to see you’d landed in an expanded basement from the building above. Some kind of water access or something. The room is small, but opens up behind you to the larger structure. It’s super old though, the plaster rotting away to brick and wood beneath, leaving holes in the walls. The room you landed in is mostly concrete, newly poured probably. Structural renovations of some kind, before they were abandoned. 

You run your hand up the wall, looking toward the hole you fell from. You can see John, and then Jade and Rose lean in too.

“Can you get back up?” Rose calls down. 

“Maybe,” you say, and back up to the opposite wall. Building a little momentum you run the two steps and leap toward the wall. With one leg you push off, and reach toward the broken wood balanced on the edge of the hole. Your fingers brush the edge, but it slips from your hand, the angle of the jump launching you too far backwards. You have to brace yourself when you land. It hurts, you hiss through your teeth while rubbing the stinging splinter in your hand.

“Oh Gosh.” Jade says.

“Here,” John says “There’s gotta be some rope or something to pull you out.”

“No,” you stop him. “There’s probably stairs here somewhere. I’ll be up in a second.” 

You get up again and brush yourself off. Then you walk through the brick pillars, deeper into the structure. 

At first your eyes struggle against the dimness, your shades admittedly not helping. But when things start to clear, you can see a faded sign on the wall pointing to a door. Stairs. 

With a shrug you head across the wide basement, navigating around fallen bricks and plaster, trying to play it cool. Truthfully it makes you more than uncomfortable to be out of sight from your friends, and you wish you hadn’t handed over your sword. A growing knot of unease eats at your stomach. 

Then one of the bricks move at your feet, and you trip, arms flailing. 

Whatever you tripped on keeps moving, scrambling in the corner of your vision. “Augh!” you roll over and grab wildly at the debris, raising a brick defensively over your head. The figure rises, and begins to throw things at you. 

“Raa!” They yell, pelting you with hard medium sized objects. 

“What!?” You throw your arms up to guard your face, and curl your legs in. The things pelt your arms and the ground by your head. They’re cans. “Stop, STOP!”

They throw one last can and stand back, panting. 

“Holy shit,” you say, and lay flat, rubbing your forearms. You’re gonna have a ton of bruises tomorrow. Then you dissolve into giggles of relief. “What, were you trying to brain me with cans?” 

You sit up. It’s hard to see, but you can tell that your attacker is still on edge.

“Por que você está rindo?” they say. “Você é um zumbi ou não?”

“…What?” you say, utterly confused. You think it’s a man? He’s muttering at you angrily brandishing a can and wringing a dirty homemade sash labeled ‘mayor’. 

“Você fez uma confusão enorme que cai através do teto! Agora há um buraco enorme! Então você chutar ao redor, e foi cancelada a minha cidade! CAN CIDADE! Você me fez jogar as latas!" he shakes the can. “Você é tão burro!”

“…Uhh. Wow. Okay. Gonna be honest, I have no idea what you’re saying.” You say, slumping your shoulders. “Definitely failed Spanish… if that’s even what you’re speaking. No Hable Espanol-e.” 

The man bristles, and then stomps forward. 

“Ahh! I didn’t mean to offend you! I’m SORRY!” You flinch back, expecting him to throw another can at you.

"Eu trabalhei muito e bem para fazer essa cidade, e então você chutou tudo. Estúpido americano,” He mutters, reaching down near your head. He begins gathering up the aluminum cylinders. “Agora você provavelmente vou sair e não me ajudar a escolher a sua bagunça.”

Relaxing, you realize he’s probably not going to hit you. You watch for a minute as he collects the cans he threw, and then you notice a larger pile that had been scattered. Some were still stacked and organized, but many had rolled far away, probably when you tripped and fell.

“The cans?” you ask pointing at them. 

“Yes! Okay? Yes,” he says. “Você fez a bagunça. Agora buscá-lo.” 

“The cans,” you repeat to be sure. “Okay we’re gonna pick up the cans.”

You push yourself up and work with him, grabbing different cans as you go. It’s fun to watch him as you work together. His stoop is short, he’s probably barely five feet, vastly different from you’re excess over six. He gets super excited about certain cans, especially pumpkin filling, and makes a lot of little extra steps before bending for the next one. He makes a little agitated dance at the stacked cans, and begins replacing the ones he’s picked up into nice towers. 

You focus on your effort to find all the lost cans. Piling them in your shirt it’s easy to notice that not all the cans are equal. Some have nice labels, advertising soup, or green beans, or corn, while some had no labels at all. Some were pull tops, and had had their tabs carefully bent to stand upright without breaking the seal. Some were short and squat, one was huge, and weighed probably five pounds. When you gather as much as you can carry, you return them to the man, “Where should I put them?” you ask.

He looks at you and gets agitated, pushing you away. “Não ande na grama!” he says.

“Hey whoa, what?” you ask, getting frustrated.

He points at the ground. “Olhe onde você está pisando!”

You follow his fingers and try to make sense of it. On the ground was a drawing, something that he had probably done himself, of a city. There were sidewalks and streets, and drawn cars, little hydrants, parks with grass. You follow it to the wall, and see he’d drawn the sky with a sun in it, and stars. There were also some planets that you didn’t recognize.

You look back at him and notice again his strap. It was wrinkled, and a little torn, but the center was actually another label, this one for MAYO. He had tied it to some article of clothing, and added an R. 

“Oh.” You’re not sure if it’s funny or sad that he’d created his own order in so much chaos. “You’re the mayor. Of… Can Town?”

He nods. 

“So, you understand me, perfectly?”

He nods again. “Eu entendo Inglês, mas eu não falo isso,” He adds.

“Oh,” you say, looking back down at Can Town. “Well, I feel like an idiot.”

“Isso é porque você é um. Mas tudo bem .”

You watch as he delicately puts cans back, making sure labels face the street, and that the popped tabs are exposed like antenna. His expression brightens as he builds the towers again, the author and finisher of the town. It makes you think about the old cinnamon roll meme, _too good for this world, too pure._ He seems content to ignore you now, but the thought of leaving him behind seems like a moral transgression.

“Hey, Look,” you start. “Mayor, some friends and I are going to leave town,--wait, I mean, Dallas town not Can Town, we can bring that with us—,” you stumble on your words as he looks up at you.

“What I mean is, you should come with us.” You pick up a wayward can. “It’d be fun.”

He watches you for a minute. “Eu sei,” he says, and sighs. “É perigoso para ficar.”

“Okay,” He says and nods. “Yes okay.” You brighten.

“Really? Well, do you have like a blanket, or something to put these in?” 

For a minute you gather the cans that you can carry and tie them in a quilt he had likely been using for sleeping. When you heft it you question the wisdom of bringing can town, but he seems happy so you try not to complain.

When you get to the stairwell you open the door, look in hear the garbled breathing, and then shut it again.

“How long has that thing been in there??” you ask the mayor.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Well shit,” you say, shifting your grip on the cans. “Can Town is gonna earn its weight.”

You push the door open with your foot, and swing the load of cans upward. It connects with the zombie’s rotting jaw, sending it flying back into the stairwell. The mayor shuffles past you and begins chucking cans, though you’re not sure where he got them.

The zombie starts to get up, but the Mayor lands some choice hits, and the last can shatters a piece of its skull away, splattering the wall. The zombie collapses and goes still. 

“Nice.” You say, appraising him as he shifts his sash proudly. “You are tougher than you look. Note taken.”

Then you hear a scream from up the stairs. It raises the hair on your neck, and you swing the cans over your shoulder to race up the stairs.

When you crash through the door at the top, you see John slamming the storefront’s glass door, Rose and Jade rushing to hold it and turn the lock. A group of zombies are pounding and licking the door.

“Where the heck have you been?” he asks you. “And who the heck is that guy?”

You look over your shoulder at the Mayor. “That’s the Mayor.” Duh.

“Of what? Where did he come from?”

The Mayor gives you a weird look. 

“Don’t doubt the mayor man!” you say defending him. “He’s got a sick town of cans and he has a really good arm, he beat the crap out of me with cans because I accidentally knocked down Can Town, and his sash is super legit. Basically he’s the shiz, and everyone should love the Mayor!” 

“Okay! Okay whatever!” He says, looking back at the zombies pounding on the door. “Let’s just find a way to ditch these guys before they find a way in here.” 

“Uhh,” you refocus, looking around the open floor space looking for another exit. The room breaks off into different partitions, and a door behind a silver counter suggests this used to be a restaurant. 

“The kitchen probably has a service door!” you point, and follow them to the back room. Sure enough, there’s a heavy metal set of double doors where deliveries were probably made. John pushes it open, lets out a yelp, and then pulls it close against the hydraulics. There’s a bang, followed by a frustrated moan. 

“Nope,” John says. “What next?”

“Uh, maybe we can jump to the next building?” Jade offers. “This neighborhood is really tightly built…”

“It’s worth a shot,” you say, trying not to think about how you fell through a part of this building already.

When you get to the stairway there’s the sound of crashing glass. 

“Dave, here!” John offers caledfwlch back. 

“Trade me,” you say, handing him the blanket of cans. 

“Why are you carrying a blanket full of cans??” John makes a face.

“Just take it!” you shout, hearing the oncoming horde.

He does, and you turn to strike down the first runner. It falls, and you thrust through his skull, then swing at the next. You take down four or five like this, listening to the footsteps get higher and higher, and then follow them up, slamming an arm shut in the door. 

On the second floor, there’s a short staircase and a door to the roof nicely padlocked by whomever was there last. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” you say, nudging Jade aside to see. You look down at caldefwich, the rusting blade was useful to inflict blunt force trauma, but it won’t be a match against this door. Turing to Jade you ask “Do you think we can shoot it?”

“Pfft, I can shoot anything, but it’s more likely that we’ll be hit by reverberating bullets. Steel’s not very forgiving that way,” She says.

There’s a stumbling crash as the zombies fall through the staircase door. 

“Rose any ideas?” you ask.

“hmm, not good ones,” she says, “but we might be able to jump windows, some of them line up on that wall,” she points.

You jog to where she’s pointing, and choose a window with a partner in the next building. Using the hilt of the sword, you break the glass and then kick out fragments. It’s about a four foot gap, a good jump, but everyone should be able to clear it easily. “Okay John you first.”

“What? I have to jump through a window? What about the glass?” he protests.

“Well, we could stand here and throw cans across but we don’t have time. If I break just a part of it you’ll bleed. If I go first zombies might kill you and I’ll feel guilty forever.” You leave the window and target the stairwell.

“You sure it’s safe?”

“Just jump John! Goddamn do you see these zombies?” you push one down the stairs. Two take it’s place.

“Okay, just gonna jump.” He winds up and leaps from the window. “PCHOO!”

There’s a shatter of glass, and you pause from fighting to look back for a second. “I’m Okay!” He yells, and you feel reassured.

“DAVE LOOKOUT!” Jade screams, levelling her rifle at you. Instinctively you leap and roll out of her line of fire, and she blows apart the skull of a zombie that had come up the stairs behind you. 

“Thanks,” you say, “You take the right, I got the lefties.” She clears the rifle’s chamber in response.

Together you work as a team against the sudden flood of bodies that had risen from the bottom floor. You see the Mayor, and then Rose Jump out of the corner of your eye. When the onslaught abates a little, you shout to Jade, “Your turn!”

She drops one last dead, and then jumps, gun pointed to the sky. You thrust through another zombie, looking for a way to stop them here. You see it in the corner, a set of pipes leading down to the kitchen, not far from the stairs. There’s a nice red fire hazard sticker still visible through the rust.

You sprint toward it, slashing one zombie, and then kicking the next. They’re coming up the stairs more slowly now, the debris both on the stairs and now accumulating on the floor causing them to trip and stumble. You’re able to maintain the upper hand, pushing some of them back into the stair door to block it after dying. 

They focus their efforts on you, leaving the window alone. When you’re almost there, you step on something that rolls twisting your ankle. Your heart jumps into your throat, as you try to catch yourself and keep your sword up in defense. As you fall you hear Jade scream, as the bodies jerk toward you in victory…

 

**Dirk: Lead The Way**

“Hey, do you hear that?” Jane says, breaking the silence. After leaving the apartment that morning, neither she nor Roxy had said anything to you. It had been another three hours of awful silence as you wondered what you could possibly say that wouldn’t be misconstrued as heartless or cold. Even the little things, every time you make a turn, every new block in the road you wonder what to say that doesn’t sound harsh or commanding. For fear of judgement you mutter any directions, ‘I think…’ ‘maybe…’ ‘it’s sort of bad here…’ ‘that might be better,’ accompanied by a head scratch and a gesture. Your hair must look like shit by now.  
Part of you is fed up, part of you doesn’t care, part of you says you’ve never cared what anybody thinks, why start now? It’s the part of you that doesn’t want to acknowledge how much losing their trust hurts. It’s the part of you who knows you feel much more able cutting people up during a social collapse than you did in any customer service job you ever had. 

But you’re not blind. The way Roxy defensively holds her gun with the finger on the safety, how Jane keeps the red spoon at the ready, it’s no longer for the zombies. The looks you feel trying to peel your skin off assures you of that. You just wish you could find the words to tell them you’ve been trying to be a better person. Instead you’re choked on silence.

That’s why when Jane speaks first you’re startled. Your hand reflexively twitches toward your hilt, but you catch yourself. “Hear what?” you say.

“I thought I heard a person scream.” She looks puzzled. 

You listen, and look down both sides of the street. Then you walk back to the corner you’d just passed. You can hear some kind of commotion, but it’s hard to make out. You don’t really want to jump into another zombie attack, so you hesitate.

“Did it sound like a person scream, or a zombie scream?” Roxy asks, probably feeling a similar reluctance. If it’s possible to avoid the trouble you’d all be safer for it.

“I don’t know, It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Do zombies scream though?”

“We could ask Jake I guess…” 

You focus on the distant struggle, trying to hear any shouts for help, or shouts of whatever people shout when being chased and attacked by dead people. Then there’s a high pitched sound that gives you goosebumps. 

“Holy Shit!” you breathe. It sounded an awful lot like _DaveLOOKOUT!_ and you’re not about to take chances on which Dave it might be. You take off at a sprint.

“Dirk where are you going?” you hear them call after you, but you’re not gonna stop. Heart pounding, you reach the end of the side street, and turn toward the noise. You see some zombies straggling to push their way into a dilapidated restaurant. Feet pound the pavement, and you push yourself faster, ignoring the burning pain building in your lungs. 

When you get closer you see the alley. You cut down the single zombie while it’s back is turned, watching something above. Then you hear another scream, loud enough to ring in your ears. A girl stands in a broken window a little ways down, watching the other building desperately. Determined, you sprint toward a dumpster and then use it to leap at the wall beneath her. On the rebound you catch her eyes, widening in shock. Then you twist, and roll through the window.

Sliding on the dusty floor you throw yourself towards where he lays spread eagle on the ground. Just as he flinches in anticipation, you skid between his attackers and swing at the first two with all your might. The bodies stop suddenly as legs loose direction to function, and the torsos slide back and topple separated cleanly. Without stopping you pull through the motion for another swing at a third. The head flies to the wall.  
In that time Dave comes to his senses and kneels behind you. “What are YOU doing here!?” he shouts at you. What a great thank you. 

“You’re welcome,” you say thrusting through another body.

“I had it under control!” he says, stepping forward to cut another down on your left. He stands straight, and you realize you have to look up to his face. That’s new.

“Yeah, That’s why you were on the ground. Perfect defense,” you say, thrusting to the right. “When did you get so tall?”

“I thought you knew, since you _follow me everywhere!_ ” He slashes at a zombie down and then hacks at a pipe on the wall. “You! Never! Let me do anything by myself!”

You realize that it’s the gas line. The rusted sword he has sparks more than it marks the pipe, which isn’t much.

“Piece of shit!” he shouts angrily. 

“Let me do it.” He ducks out of the way, and takes your place by kicking a zombie back before cutting another’s head off. 

Taking a second to center yourself, you imagine the blade passing through the pipe like butter. Then you lunge, and swing with both hands. The pipe puts up a little resistance, sending a jolt through your arms to the shoulder, but it gives, shattering on the edge in a puff of rust. You follow through the move, jumping and twisting to kick the pipe open. When you land you hear a satisfying hiss, and smell propane.

You ignore the fact that that would have been useless if the gas line had been turned off. “What now?” you ask.

“Now we jump. You first.” He says, huffing as the zombies struggle to keep up. 

Doing as he says you sheathe your sword and jog past the growing mound of bodies, some still wriggling with brains intact. Then you put a foot on the window ledge and leap. 

You turn back and look. Dave fights the line back, and then dashes to the window, fishing in his pocket. He finds what he’s looking for, and then pauses on the ledge.

“Ba-Boom, motherfuckers,” he says, striking the lighter. Then, adjusting his grip on his broadsword, jumps from the window, throwing the flame over his shoulder at the same time. There’s a slight delay as Dave lands on his knees, then the window frame explodes in flame. The force of it knocks the six of you back, and the glare makes you shade your face, even with sunglasses on.

When the heat passes, you stand up and look around. Dave and his friends seem to be okay, nobody had suffered serious wounds. Though you have to wonder how he chooses his friends, pausing your gaze on an apparently middle aged possibly latino man. Then you double take when you see someone familiar. John coughs and brushes off his sweatshirt. Considering the last time you saw him you were beating a zombie to the ground so it wouldn’t eat him, you figure it’s best to avoid any uncomfortable circumstance and just walk away. 

Getting up you walk past them through the room. You don’t look in John’s eye. The front door to the apartment is your only goal. 

“Hey,” Dave calls after you, “That’s it, you’re just going to leave then?” 

“Pretty much,” you say, opening the door. You walk out, and let the door swing shut behind you. Before you get to the stairs though you hear it open again. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” You hear John say.

“Weren’t you the one who was all ‘Let’s go find Bro?’ ” Dave says louder in the doorway. “Well we found him.”

You turn the corner and head down a flight of stairs. As you hit the landing he appears at the top.

“Hey, What the hell?” He says like that deserves an answer on its own. “You spend most of my life unable to just leave me the fuck alone, and now you’re just gonna walk out?”

“I thought you _wanted_ me to leave you alone…?” you pause, letting that sit in the air. Then you shrug and head down the second half of the staircase.

“No,” He follows you still, “I just need to understand. How do you get off flying through a window to ‘save the day’ and then just walk out again like none of our shit ever happened?”

“Dave I can’t do this.” You say, pushing the front door open. You hope he’ll just let you go, but before the latch can click you hear it push open again.

“And Why not?” He yells.

 _Because I can’t deal with more people treating me like some kind of asshole freak,_ you don’t answer, _even if I am one._

“Dirk!” Roxy yells, coming up the street with Jane and Jake not far behind. “What the actual heack? You were gone for literally ten seconds, and shit blows up!?”

“Actually,” you say, jerking a thumb over your shoulder, “that was him.”

“Oh my god there are two of him.” She says stopping in surprise.

“Who the hell are they?” Dave asks. The door behind him opens, and you see Dave’s friends come to join the party, John somewhat reluctantly. He hangs back and holds the door half open using it as a shield. You see him, and feel his fear as a premonition. Here we go.

“Dave, these are my friends,” you test the word, they don’t protest. “RoxyJaneandJake. Jane, Rox, this is Dave. My little brother.”

“No shit.” Roxy says, still a little stunned. “You’re like twins except he’s taller.”

“Yeah I noticed.” You mutter under your breath. “Well, it’s been fun! But uh, we’re gonna go!” you turn on your heel again, trying to leave the bewildered faces behind. Then someone speaks up.

“Did he say Jake?” a girl says. _No_ you think. “Is that Jake?” she says louder. _No it’s not._ “JAKE!” _Goddamnit._

She runs past Dave, a fairly large gun slung over her shoulder. As she gets closer, you prepare to stop her, but not really knowing how. You kind of just awkwardly stand there with your arms wide. But then you see her face fall from excitement to confusion, and she slows to a stop in front of you. 

"What happened to him?” she asks you, looking up with green eyes magnified by her glasses. They’re strikingly familiar. She tries to push past you but you grab her. “What happened to him?” 

"It’s not, He, It’s not bad,” 

“Jake!” 

“It’s, He’s Okay, He’s just sick,” you say, struggling to stop her from running to him, or hitting you. “We’re gonna fix him.” 

“Jake.” She says. Glancing back you see him slowly shrinking behind Roxy. 

“It’s, Aw man please don’t cry,” She’s gotta be like what, sixteen? In a fit she pushes back. 

“YOU!” she shouts, and then comes at you fully, fists flailing. “YOU LET HIM GET BIT!” You hold your arms up in defense but let her hit you. You figure you deserve it. “YOU LET HIM DIE!” 

She stops suddenly, huffing. Defensively you keep your arms up. 

“He was my cousin! He took me out to lunch three weeks ago. He was there when Bec died!” she sniffs, letting tears fall. “Now he’s gone, and I wasn’t there.” 

You don’t know what to say. Uncomfortable, you can feel everyone staring you down. The silence is only broken by her growing sobs. The other girl comes up behind and grabs her hand. Dave walks up sword drawn, to glare at you. John keeps his distance. 

Reaching for something to say to comfort her you say “We’re gonna try to find a cure. The CDC moved north to Virginia…” 

Then she looks up. “It would have been better if you’d just finished him off. There is no cure. No one gets better!” she lunges at you again, but Dave pulls her back into a hug. He mumbles something in her ear.

You fall back, mouth set in a hard line. 

Dave steps forward, giving his sword an unconscious flick. “You’re an ass." 

"I’m an ass?” you say. 

“You’re sick. You need help. Why are you risking death, why prolong someone’s suffering—he can’t have agreed to this!” He says, getting in your face. 

You snort, trying not to lose your cool. “Why? Okay, I’ll answer with a question. Why are you so careless? Need I remind you I just saved your life! Again, you’re welcome.” 

“I had a plan,” he says defensively. 

“Yeah, the gas line.” You point at the green eyed girl, “She has a gun! Since she’s related to Jake, I bet she’s a better shot than you. So here’s what you do: shoot the valve, light the place up. Nobody fights a mob one to a hundred and dies a martyr.” 

“Don’t deflect,” he says. 

“I’m not!” you say. You don’t really owe him any explanation, but if you don’t say something that girl might shoot you. “Though you’re stupid, you still did what you felt you had to. I’m just doing what I have to do.” 

“So he’s you’re boyfriend,” he says. You feel your ears get hot. “Ergo you’re a sicko. What gives you the right to make that decision for someone? Here’s a guess, it isn’t love!" 

“You’ll want to be careful what you say to me,” you say quietly so just he hears. You’re somewhat surprised by how much you want to hit him right now. And then hit him some more. 

“Why? What are you going to do?” he lowers his voice too. “Do they know what you’re like when you lose your temper?” 

It would be really easy. Just a left hook. Smack those aviators right off his face. 

There’s a crash, and both of you startle, looking back toward the burning building. After a few seconds nothing moves, but you’re still wary. Anxiety eats at your insides. It’s time to move on.  
“How about this,” you propose. “If anyone feels Jake would be better off with a bullet in his head, you’re going to have to go through me to do it.” 

“I’ll take care of Jake.” You look back at the girl, “…even if it kills me.” 

“What are you saying?” Dave says, raising an eyebrow. 

“It’s not safe to stay here. You don’t have to follow me or whatever but for now we need to go,” you answer, looking around at the group. “I’m going. With or without… whoever,” you end, with a bland gesture at the air. Then you walk away. 

As you pass Roxy you reach out and grab Jake’s arm where he’s crouched by a car. Gently you raise him, trying not to see how he stares, trying not to see the way he hangs on his frame or shakes when he walks, trying not to notice how he looks back, only briefly, and towards the ground, but towards the girl all the same. Then together, you leave. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which there is some fake hacking. I'll be honest, I only really have limited experience with programming and Bash, so if anyone has corrections for that I'm happy to take them haha.
> 
> Also more suicide mentions, for those who need to know. It's not nearly as personally potent this time. Stay safe!
> 
> Hope you enjoy~

**Dirk: Be The Unsung Hero**

It turns out everybody followed you. 

At first you weren’t sure anyone would. But then, the sound of footsteps, gradually joined one after another proved you wrong. 

Jane and Roxy had spent the rest of the day getting to know Dave and his friends. John and Jane exchanged jokes, and prank ideas, Roxy spent quite a bit of time talking to the other two girls, which you gathered their names were Rose and Jade. Dave spent his time wandering between the two groups, adding satire and irony where he could. He also spent a good deal of time talking to ‘the Mayor’. Nobody talked to you, but at least they were there.

You wove your way through the streets, loosely following the path of the freeway. Eventually you’d need to find a car (or a few cars with this group) to get out of town, but that would have to wait until you were on the edge. The bike ride the other day had proved the gridlock had been heinous for quite a distance on the roads.

Every once in a while you’d be going in a direction, and Jake would pull against you. At one point you ignored him, but he persisted, planting his feet and leaning off your arm like a limp noodle until you couldn’t move any further. “Okay! Fine! We’ll go that way,” and you let him lead you down a side street. After correcting east again, he was okay. 

Someone in the future might not believe you if you ever get to tell your story, but you know he’s still there. You think of the mad dash from the mob yesterday, or even that first night when he fought off a gang by himself: both times somehow he knew, _he knew_ , those zombies were there, and his reaction was to protect. To defend. If he were really dead he would have joined them in attacking or eating or whatever. 

Of course there are probably limitations to what he can handle, and you promise yourself you’ll find him another meal tomorrow. We don’t want another ‘let’s eat John’ attack.

By the time the sun started to set you were deep in suburbia. You’d followed Samuell underneath I-30 again on its way east, to a part of town that might not even be called Dallas anymore. You have no idea, you’ve never been here before. But houses are houses, and thinking wishfully of sleeping in a bed you lead the group into the idyllic brick neighborhood. Any of them will do. You pick a place at random, and by sheer luck the front door is open. 

Roxy, Dave, and yourself search the interior, while the others stand watch outside. At first you think that no one is home, but when you get to the master bathroom something awful hits your nose. Looking in the shower, a man lay crumpled on the floor, a gun in his hands an awful stain on the wall. Quietly, you open a window, then lock the door from the inside and close it. You don’t want anyone else walking in on that. 

When you are sure there aren’t any zombies in any closets, you meet them back at the front. “It’s clean. Just, don’t use the master bedroom,” you tell them. 

Then everyone chooses rooms and settles down for the night. You let them pick the bedrooms, realizing that you won’t be sleeping in a bed after all. It’s probably for the best; mixing a witnessed suicide and recent night terrors probably won’t end well anyway. It leaves you and Roxy in the front room. 

“Where are you going to sleep?” she asks you pointedly.

“Uh,” you say, “I was going to stay up for watch. Down here probably.”

“Can we trust you?” she says.

“You tell me,” you counter. Then you take a breath. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight anyway. I’ve slept a bunch the last two nights, and I want to do something useful. If I’m up I might as well…” you shrug your shoulders and mumble to a stop, watching her.

“Fine,” she says, “But I’m gonna get up around four.”

“Okay,” You say, trying to be—you don’t know—accepting? Confirming? It’s not like you want to stop her or anything. Though she could use the rest.

She walks down the hall into the first bedroom. You open the blinds and sit down, getting ready for the dark.

 

**Dirk: Keep Watch.**

This night sleep and dreams leave you alone. Good riddance. But there are a lot of hours left to yourself to think. 

It frustrates you that everyone seems to be angry at you despite your efforts, but what really has you miffed about everything, is how readily they seem to have given up on Jake. Dave and his friends you don’t really know, and John obviously has no reason to trust somebody he’s only known as a murder hungry zombie, but Jades reaction has you spooked. Does she really believe he’s gone? Would you have felt that way if you found Dave had been bit? You don’t know. She hasn’t had the experience of watching it happen, of living with him, of keeping him alive. If she had she would see. At least that’s what you tell yourself.

But the thing you really don’t understand is Jane and Roxy. They’ve known Jake longer than you have, surely they can see he’s still there? That whatever is happening to him, he hasn’t died? And if that isn’t the case, why abandon him? You get that having a sordid past (no pun intended) tends to change how people look at you but what has Jake done? Besides be a zombie… maybe, half the looks of distrust directed at you the last couple of days have been for him. Are they really scared of him?

You breathe a sigh. Maybe that’s it, just the disease has made him a threat. How horrible is it that the gentlest person in the world can be turned into a monster?

You sit a while remembering all the ways you owe your life to the guy on the couch. And then you just remember him. You miss him. While he breathes, you think back to another place, another time…

_______________

“So you scan a barcode, and the sales just come up automatically right? Simple.” Bret says, rehearsing the rote register training without needing your input of ‘mmhmms’ or ‘okays.’ You’ve done this like five times before, after a while you don’t listen but perform your part as required. “Returns. That’s this button. Says returns. Do they have a receipt? Then push the button that says receipt. If not, use the one that says no receipt. You have the option to look it up by their card under there.”

“Mhmm.” The front door opens, and you have a moment that’s probably not unlike some trashy rom-com movies. Somehow, though you’re pretty sure it’s cloudy, an angel walks in wreathed in sunlight. There are a lot of things that cross your mind, but among the top of the list is _My God, he’s handsome_. Then you remember that as required for work you aren’t wearing sunglasses, and you’re staring. Feeling your ears getting hot you focus on the register screen like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. 

“Hey Bret!” the angel says.

“Hey Jake!” he replies.

“Training newbies today?” Jake asks. “When do you get off?” 

Oh no, he has an accent.

“Five,” he says.

“Ah Lucky,” he says. “What’s your name?” he asks. It takes a second before you recognize he’s asking you.

“Me? Dirk.” You give him a nod. No smile, just a hard line. _Act like a normal person Goddamnit_.

“Dirk? That’s different.” He says shaking your hand. “Up on the chopping block eh? Don’t let Bret push you around too much! He’s a bit gruff, but then you should see him on poker Sundays.”

“Don’t make me regret poker nights,” Bret says, giving him a look.

Jake just gives a chuckle. He chuckles. Holy shit. “Hunting and Fishing?” he calls, heading to clock in.

“You got it,” Bret returns to the register. “So, online returns are a little different. They run on a different system, if they don’t have an invoice we can’t process it. So you push this button here…”

______________

It’s in the break room a few weeks later that you see him again. Breaks are kind of the bane of your existence, usually you sit there and poke at your phone, counting the minutes until you can do something productive for getting paid. You’re not big on social media though, so that only lasts five of the fifteen minutes that you’re required to sit and do nothing. Then you stare at the motivational posters and broken exercise equipment. This is what you’re doing when he pushes open the break room door. 

You double take, and then quickly pretend to be on your phone. You poke the screen absently like somebody who’s too cool to look up when people walk through the door. In reality you were internally screaming. _Don’t talk to me! What if he does? Shit shit shit shit_

“Oh hey!” he says, spotting you after closing the fridge. “Haven’t seen you for a while. Survived training I guess then?”

“What?” you look up from your phone as if you’d just noticed he’s there. “Oh yeah. It was thrilling.”

“Remind me your name?” he says, but then holds up his hand “No wait don’t! Let me remember I can get it. Started with a D… Dean? Dave? No it was more different than that,” he looks at you pensive. “What’s it end with?”

“k.”

That almost makes him more confused for a minute, every second of the attention making your heart pound. You’re about to just tell him so you can avoid a heart attack but then he brightens.

“No I’ve got it! Was it Dirk?” he says.

You permit the tiniest smile to the corner of your mouth. “You got it.”

“Ah I knew it.” He sits down with his coke. “No well I didn’t really. I read your nametag.”

You let the smile leave. “You cheeky shit. You had me going, I thought you were being really sincere,” you say impulsively, hoping he’ll see it’s a joke. _For the love of all that is holy don’t be offended!_

“What, it’s customary to treat all new employees with cheek. You can’t hold that against me huh?”

“I guess not,” you say. _Phew._

“So what are you in for?” he says, changing the subject.

“We’re in prison now?” you say, not really following.

“No! Well, maybe, depends how much you like retail I guess.” He takes a sip from is drink. “No, I mean, what do you do? Nobody works at a sporting goods store except to support their hobbies with an employee discount.”

“Oh,” you say. “I just work. I don’t have hobbies.” 

“Poppycock. You must like something.”

He says poppycock, oh my god. “Uh, I like knives I guess.” Long ones.

“Ah a hunter. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type.” 

“I’m full of surprises.” You suppose it isn’t totally a lie. There’s a lot of similar skills between hunters and mercenaries.

“What do you typically go for?” he asks.

“UH,” you choke. Yeah, it’s probably best not to let this lie get out of hand. _Reel it in Dirk!_ “I haven’t been in a long while. I guess I sort of like swords?”

“Like fencing?” he asks, intrigued.

“Sure,” you say, and then steer things away from yourself. “What about you what do you do?”

“Well,” he shrugs. “A bit of everything I suppose. I have a cabin in Colorado, I like to go there some weekends to hike and hunt and stuff. Bouldering. Rafting. You name it.”

“Colorado? Isn’t that really far for a weekend?” you say.

“Well, I guess if you drive it is. Luckily I don’t usually drive.” He doesn’t elaborate. Whatever it is that isn’t driving means he’s got means.

“What do you like to hunt?” you ask.

“Duck hunting is pretty fun. You ever been?” he asks. You shake your head. He smiles wider. “You’re missing out. Nothing like building sets for deer. It’s real marksmanship getting a waterfowl.” 

“Sounds exciting.”

“It is,” he says. The both of you are quiet for a minute.

“Hey, I was planning on going up this weekend, would you want to come?”

“What really?” _OH MY GODOHMYGO_ “You need someone that bad you’ll ask the new guy who likes knives.”

“Only if he shows me how to fence.”

 _AAAAAAAAA_ “Man you are really twisting my arm. Guess I gotta go.”

“Splendid.”

You get up to go back to the floor. Then you stop, something bothering you. “Do they send these machines off to get serviced?” you say pointing at the broken equipment in the corner.

“Honestly I have no idea. That’s probably been there for the better part of a year.”

“hmm.” You nod and push the door open.

_______________

“I still can’t believe that you invited me over that weekend,” you say quietly looking down to him as he sleeps on the couch. At least you think he’s sleeping. It looks more like a coma. You’re sure he’s fine.

Looking at him you snort. “Especially because I couldn’t shoot worth a damn,”

 

_______________

“What have you never held a gun before?”

“Uhh,” you decide to be honest, “no.” To be fair your experience with guns usually included a high probability of getting a GSW, and you’d be damned if you went to a hospital only to be reported to the police.

He takes it from you and puts it firmly to his shoulder. “You can’t be afraid of it, or the kick will hit you in the face. ‘Specially with the shells I bought, ha. There’s nothing to be afraid of!” he chuckles at the look on your face. “It’s not gonna hurt.”

 

_______________

“I don’t think I hit a single duck.” You say. “But I wanted to. Just because you wanted me to so badly.”

The night is quiet, you keep watching the street outside, but there hadn’t been any movement. Not even a stray animal.

“And then you were serious about the fencing. Of course you had a pair of rapiers at that cabin it’s like goddamn Fort Knox.” You shake your head. “I should’ve known better.”

 

_______________

You’d started slow. Parrying. That’s it. You weren’t gonna go any further. 

“No, when you move use both feet. Don’t stay stationary or you’ll lose your balance.” You tell him, watching his feet.

He lunges with a thrust. You deflect it easily. “Like that?” he says.

“That’s not a parry.” You say.

“Come on Dirk!” he says. “I know you know more than that! Give me your best shot!”

A challenge. His confidence gives you confidence. You swing your sword up through the grass, flinging up a dandelion. It hovers for a second, then you cut it in half. The seeds float to the ground. You smile the tiniest smile.

“Show me what you got.” You say in return.

 

_______________

You look at his face and can still see a thin faded scar on his right cheek. Hating yourself you look between your knees.

 

_______________

It was a good fight. He wasn’t a novice, that’s for sure. But his training, like his accent, was a lot more formal, guarded by rules and morals. 

Things you gave up a while ago.

When he sidesteps with one foot you take advantage of his mistake. Focusing on his foil’s tip, you circle parry, and then whip your blade up, yanking the hilt out of his hand. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, but not as much as your side kick, which knocks him to the ground.

Before he can move you’re above him. You know you’ve won, but there’s a fierceness in your chest awakened by adrenaline. It knows you can’t let him get up, let him get a weapon, let him gain advantage. _Finish it!_ It screams. _Finish it finish it finish it finish it finish it_

In a fluid movement you lunge, then catch yourself, redirecting the aim. At first you hope you missed him entirely. He lies there with his eyes scrunched shut. Then a thin line of red puckers on his cheek.

Something in your heart becomes hard. Puffing, you step back. “Move with both feet.” You tell him. You turn away, ashamed.

“That wasn’t fencing.” He says sitting up. “That was amazing! What is that eastern? Martial arts?”

You look back at his face. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s bleeding, but looks up at you with awe. _No, that’s not fair, you should hate me!_

“Uh, it’s a mix,” you say. “Taekwuondo, Kendo, Wing Chun. Random stuff that’s against the rules.” 

“Show me how to do that,” he says getting back up.

“No! I mean, not today.” You say, knowing yourself, knowing the animal inside. “I think we should get that looked at.” You point at his cheek, and he touches it realizing the cut is there.

 

You came home with rifle bruises. He came home with a scar.

 

_______________

“I was so afraid, that either I would hurt you or that you would see what I am.” You’re talking to him, but to no one as well. It’s a rare moment to be alone like this. “There are days that I wonder if I’m nothing more than a caged animal. Most people only see the cage.”

Dirk the Tight Ass. Dirk lighten up! Have more fun! They don’t know why you can’t.

“But you saw neither.” You say, heaving a sigh. “I don’t know how you didn’t see either.”

“And then you decided that I should meet more people.”

 

_______________

“Hey are you on lunch?” he says coming through the break door as you’re clocking out. “Half or an hour?”

“Hour,” you say, doing your sitting and pretending to be on the phone thing.

“Good! Come on we’re going to get food.”

There wasn’t any arguing so you went. 

“Do you like Mexican?” he asks pulling his corolla into a Chico’s Tacos.

“Sure,” Not particularly but whatever.

You figure it’s just benign food, but upon entering Jake is welcomed by what sounds vaguely like a banshee scream. 

“JAKE’S HERE!” A tall blond jumps out of a nearby booth and wraps him in a hug. _Dear Lord we’re socializing_. You start to feel so out of place you wish you could melt through the floor.

She lets him go, and he goes through introductions. You sit in the booth next to Jane, who moves her purse for you to sit, and then listen to Rox motor mouth about pretty much everything. The only thing keeping you from looking at your wrist and pretending it’s time to go are his smiles of reassurance across the table. So you stay.

“So you like work together?” She asks you.

“Yeah,” You say. You’re not a conversationalist.

“That’s a nice shirt where did you get it?” she asks, undeterred.

“It’s Versace.”

“Really?”

“No.” 

“Ha.” She breathes, raising an eyebrow. “He’s good. Good choice Jake.”

 

_______________

A small electronic beep breaks your train of thought. You look around the room looking for anything with a power light. There’s nothing, but then you notice in the adjacent study a blue glow light up the room. You get up to see what it is.

 

_______________

They share stories over their food. You’re allowed to eat and listen. You start to feel comfortable.

 

_______________

In the corner the computer on the desk had powered itself on. The regular boot for windows began, but then was cut short fuzzing to a black screen. 

You flick the light switch. Nothing happens. But the power light on the tower still glows. Weird. 

 

_______________

Before leaving Jake and Roxy are talking about the next Indiana Jones remake to hit theatres. 

“We should go!” She says. “Would you want to?” she asks the group.

You shrug.

“Give me your number Dirk, We’ll text you when we’re going.”

 

_______________

You head down the hall, looking for a silver box. It’s in a closet. 

When you look in the breaker all the switches are in the off position. Power surge when the city went dark could have done that. Except for one. You try to push it to the left, but it won’t budge. You just both thumbs. Nothing changes. Really weird.

 

_______________

You went to the movies. It was actually pretty entertaining. 

After leaving Jane says something about getting Chinese.

“I know a good place. You ever been to the one on Main st?”

“No! I haven’t,” she says.

“Oh you are missing out. We gotta go sometime.”

“Why not right now?”

 

_______________

Walking back into the study you see the computer isn’t blank anymore.

HELLO DIRK. 

That is really, really weird.

 

_______________

“It’s up there on the left,” you give directions to Jake from the back seat. He drives slowly here, unfamiliar with old downtown streets, and with a wariness you suppose is warranted. It looks pretty shabby during the day, but at night it has a familiar feeling of being shanked. “Trust me, it’s worth the drive!”

 

_______________

I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOu.

You watch the words on the screen while you rifle through your backpack, heart pounding. It’s here somewhere. Pulling out a leather pouch you empty it on the desk. You choose a flash drive and stick it into the tower. 

“come on, come on,” you mumble, watching the loading bar.

YOu’RE QuITE SPECIAL.

You grind your teeth, and the Terminal window opens. Who in the world? You wonder, who do you know, who hates you, who wants to screw with you? 

 

_______________

The bell rings as you enter, and you choose a table to sit at. You watch them look at the menu already knowing what you’ll order.

Your foot taps. Nervous, you’re not sure if you’re proving yourself to them, or proving something to yourself. 

 

_______________

Your fingers fly as you type out bash commands, glad that whatever OS this computer is running right now is compatible with the terminal you’re running. It’s not windows. Could be linux. 

You could just type rm –rf *.* and the computer would be wiped clean. But that would hide whoever it is that’s doing this forever. They might be good enough to remotely hack a powerless computer, but you don’t lose. 

 

_______________

You watch the window absently while they talk.

“Dirk, you’re shaking the table.” Roxy says, picking up her water so it won’t spill. 

“Oh.” You stop tapping your foot.

“What can we do to put you at ease?”

 

_______________

The words keep changing as you work.

SOMEONE KNOWS YOu’RE ALIVE. 

“Augh” you say, backing out of another directory. You’re not sure what you’re looking for, but whatever it is it’s buried deep. Typing another command you start to sift through the program files.

YOu ARE GIVING HER HOPE.

Suddenly the black background lights up, and it makes you blink back defensively. When you look you see yourself, from above by a fisheye lens, then it changes and you’re across the street. Then you’re on a bike. Then it’s a frame of your face with CNN on the wall. The clips keep coming, making bile rise in your throat. You scroll through the list, looking for adware. It has to be here, this isn’t a ghost.

 

_______________

“You should try the Lo Mein.” You say. “Or maybe the Dim Sum. That one’s good too.” If you’re anything you’re a frequent Chinese connoisseur. 

“Dirk.”

“What.”

“We trust your choice in Chinese food.”

Surprisingly, that makes you feel a lot better.

 

_______________

There’s a few things that are on this computer that shouldn’t be there, but not anything that you can pinpoint as a remote host.

I CANT LET THAT HAPPEN.

“Gotcha.” There’s a nice nasty looking program titled 11_11_11D0ct0ruU.exe. Well, there’s no guarantee that that is what you’re looking for, but there’s one way to find out.

You type run reverseHide.exe 11_11_11D0ct0ruU. The command line fills with lines of code as your program runs its precautions, and then begins tracing the hack.

 

_______________

The dinner is great. You start to add your two cents in conversation, feeling more and more comfortable as the night wears past closing time. The server had brought the bill back already when out of the corner of your eye you see one of the waiters in the kitchen talking down a troll in the kitchen door window. He makes eye contact with you.

“Oh well, I think we should go guys,” you say standing up. They look up at you surprised, and check the time. 

“Oh man it’s late! I need to get to bed for lab in the morning,” Jane says, grabbing her purse. 

“Good call Dirk” Jake says, putting his hand on your shoulder before heading for the door. You let them go in front of you, and wait until Roxy is out the door before you follow, leaving trouble behind.

 

_______________

You watch the lines of code as they appear, turning up router number after number. Whoever it is they’re good. This is more steps to bounce a signal than you’ve ever taken. Then the cursor stops, and the window closes.

“What!” you whisper shout. You push the window button a couple times, and then the escape key. Nothing happens. The monitor freezes on a picture of you holding Jake on the ground. Then it goes to black.

NICE TRY.

WE’LL BE IN TOuCH.

The computer gives a click as the drive complains, then puffs into silence, giving up the ghost. You push the power button. It stays quiet.

You sit back and stare at it in shock.

“Dirk what are you doing?” Roxy asks in the doorway.

“Noth—,” you shake yourself out of your stupor. “Nothing. I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Right. Okay and I’m not awake at 3:45 because you’re out here doing nothing.”

You look at her. She watches you, arms crossed. Then she turns and goes to sit in the front room.

You sigh. Quietly you walk in after her. “I tried to see if the computer was working, but it wouldn’t even complete the boot.” You say to her back. “I was just bored.”

Not necessarily untrue. You shouldn’t worry her about a toothless hack, spooky as it may be. She doesn’t say anything, just watches the window.

“What can I do to put you at ease?” you ask her.

She waits a moment before replying. “Tell the truth.”

 

_______________

Jake drops you off last, at the bottom of your apartment building. 

“Thanks,” you say, grabbing the handle to get out.

“Wait,” he says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” you say, sitting back.

“Who was the troll in the kitchen?”

You gape for a moment surprised. “No, nobody—”

“Don’t say ‘what troll’ please,” he looks at you. “Dirk are you in trouble?”

“hmm!” you laugh. “Not these days.” It’s been a hard road, but you’ve convinced them you’re out of business. You look out the window bitterly.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” He asks.

 

_______________

You think about the first time you told somebody about your past. “Okay.” You say, and pull up a chair beside her. “Ask me anything. What do you want to know?”

She looks across at you surprised. “Where did you grow up?”

“We’re going that far back huh?” you smile.

“Just answer the question.”

“Here. Well, not this house. Dave and I were both born at Clements, our first house was a modest place up in Carrollton.”

“Really?” she says looking at you.

“Really Really.” You say.

“Huh. What I’ve never understood is why you don’t have an accent like most people.” 

You snort. “That’s because this is Dallas. You know what the rest of Texas says about Dallas?” you dial up the roots, “Them city hicks with their jeweled pants up their ass belong in California!”

Her eyes widen and she laughs “It does exist!”

“Like most people from Dallas I can dial it up or down as needed.” 

She becomes quiet. “So… then how did you…” she says.

You don’t offer her any help. If she wants to ask, she’s gotta ask.

“…You know… become a gangster? Like a Troller?”

“Don’t I seem the type?”

She just looks at you. You sigh.

“It’s a long story. You sure you’re up for it?”

She nods. 

“Allright. Well, open the curtain on my sixteenth birthday…”

 

_______________

“You gotta promise me you’re not some undercover cop,” you say, knowing how that sounds.

“I’m not”

“I swear to God Jake! Big G!”

He crosses his heart and holds his hand up in a swear. “I’m not!”

“I used to work for them.” You tell Jake.

“The Trollers? Like the Gangs?” he says.

“Involuntarily.” You say. “But it’s over now so!”

“Why? What happened?”

“I needed the money. Or our Landlord was going to throw us out.”

“Yeah but couldn’t you get a job?”

“I tried for a while, but name one job a sixteen year old can do that pays the bills.”

“…I can’t think of any.”

“Right, so,” you say, throwing your arms open like it was obvious.

“What about your parents?” he asks. “Where were they?”

“Well, they couldn’t help.” You say.

“Why?” you look up at him and realize that he doesn’t see the cage. He doesn’t see the animal. He’s not afraid of what you might say. He trusts you. “Dirk, tell me.”

You look away, staring into the middle distance. It might feel nice, to not be alone. 

“hhah. Okay. When I was younger, they were both at home. I don’t really know what either of them did for work, but they seemed to be home all the time. We were a normal family. But then Dad started to work out of town, and we saw him less and less. Mom did her best with us on her own, but I was not the easiest kid I guess. I gave her a run for it, spent most days away from home. I don’t know why. I was trying too hard I think, to be somebody. “

“He and my mom had a rocky relationship, she tried to support his work, but it just got to a point that they didn’t know each other anymore. She blamed him for abandoning his family, but she wasn’t perfect either. She had somebody she was sleeping with, and he didn’t want a teenager and a kid, so. Makes life harder when you’ve got baggage I guess. She decided to let us have our chances with dad.

“When dad would come home he’d bring stuff from around the world. He worked in films, directed a few, most were marginally successful in the states, but would earn a lot overseas. But I got the feeling that that wasn’t the only thing he was doing? I mean, I don’t really know, He spent a lot of time with Dave just talking about his webcomic, but with me he’d always drill me on politics, and then play it off as ironic like he wanted to fake being a stern parent who’d guilt his son into being a lawyer.

“But he’d also always ask me who my friends were. He made it pretty clear we were not to associate with trolls. And I used to think that was about the gangs, but one day he sat me down and told me he wouldn’t be around forever. That it was up to me to take care of Dave. And I already was at that point! But I still feel like there was something else going on he wouldn’t tell me.

“I couldn’t tell what he wanted from me. He’d pay for martial arts lessons, but never asked about them. He gave Dave a pair of glasses from ben stiller, but couldn’t remember any of the things I liked. I started just taking care of myself. Eventually I got to the point where I was afraid if he knew anything about me he wouldn’t understand me.

“Then he hit it big. Remember that movie that satirized a guy getting a job for a world conglomerate that turned out to be a conspiracy to destroy the world?" you ask.

“You’re dad directed The Interview?” Jake interjects. “That movie that’s illegal to sell in the states?”

“That was one of his first really popular movies. He did a few others, that made increasingly ironic commentaries on society. He was in the middle of directing another that was meant to be the highest grossing film in the last thirty years, but they cancelled it,” you say, remembering with a weak smile.

“I looked up to him so much.”

“But he barely ever came home by that point. And then one day a few months after we’d seen him I checked the mail, and found more bills than I had ever seen. We’d never gotten bills. He’d always taken care of it. But there were some there that were overdue months. I tried to call him but his number was disconnected, I tried his office, but when I did the receptionist just told me she’d never heard of him. 

“I tried to call our landlord and tell him that Dad would pay, but he just acted like he didn’t know who he was, said that all our payments were routed anonymously. Same with the utility companies. When I tried to figure out where our bank was they told me our account had been closed. We had nothing to our name.

“He just disappeared.”

“Then on my sixteenth birthday I came home and there was a red envelope shoved under the door. I remember clearly because it was my birthday. Nobody ever remembered by the time I was that old, but I had a ritual of starting Gurren Lagann over each year. Anyway. Good show. But that’s not the point.

“The letter was our notice of dismissal. I was sixteen and effectively homeless. 

“I didn’t know what to do. It was just me and Dave, and Dave didn’t know yet. I didn’t know how I was going to tell him that Dad was just gone. So I went out to get a job.

“I looked for two weeks, we had thirty days before they took our belongings to the dump, and living without utilities sucks, lemme tell ya. I had made up my mind to drop out of school to pay the bills, but nobody needed me for the hours I wanted, even with three part time jobs it wouldn’t have been enough. 

“Then one day,” you say, sighing at the ceiling. “Maybe it was providence. I don’t really believe in that crap but a lot of trolls told me it was that. 

“I got mugged. I had a dollar fifty for the bus home, and I got mugged. By some yellow horned troll who was tall and thought he knew it all. As I watched him throw my library card and student Id to the ground I guess I kinda snapped. Got the knife he’d held me down with and used it against him. I didn’t really hold back. 

“He was lucky to be alive.

“On the way home I was stopped again. This time by some head honcho troll. I was already kind of shaken up by what had happened, I was scared to shit they were gonna drop me then and there. Instead, they offered me a job. Said I was the best they’d ever seen. Said they would pay my way to college if I did what they wanted. Turns out they were lying on that front but hey, I was young and desperate, not a good combination.

“They told me I had to get rid of someone for them. So. I did. 

“Now, I don’t know if I was really what they needed in the beginning. I think there was some weird psychological thing in it for them, using a young pariah to stick it to another species. Who knows. The next day I got a check for three thousand dollars. I got our apartment back, turned the power back on, had a hot shower and went back to school. Graduated at least.

“I worked for them up until a year and a half ago. I quit after that whole Aquarius vs Scorpio gang war. Worst goddamn shit storm I have ever had the misfortune to be sucked into. After that I made it pretty clear I was done.”  
You breathe in. “Now I just work normal jobs, tryin’ to get by on a lot less for work that doesn’t include murder,” you finish.

He sits there and regards you. “Oh my god Dirk. Come here.”

“Hey, what—” you say as he pulls you in across the center console for a hug. You’re not ready for it, and a car isn’t really optimal for embracing someone. “I’m fine Jake, really.”

“Shut up you ass hat and let me hug you.”

You heave a sigh, and let the stiffness go out of you. It’s not that bad you guess.

 

_______________

“So that’s why you wouldn’t help him up.” Roxy says.

You shrug. You don’t know why you didn’t help Eriden, He was too young to ever be an antagonist for you. You both watch the wide window as it slowly changes from black to grey outside.

“We’re still doing the full honesty thing right?” she looks at you warily.

“Yeah.” You say. “Open Book Time lasts until the next person wakes up. So ask the good ones.”  
“…How many?” She says, looking at the ground.

You look at her before replying. “God Rox, do you want to go to their funerals?” She flinches. “No! Sorry. No judgement. It was rhetorical not literal!” you say, trying to rectify. You’re an ass.

“I honestly don’t know. And to be frank, that bothers the living hell out of me. I couldn’t name them all because I wasn’t ever given names. Dozens. At least. Maybe more than that. And I mean, I haven’t slept in years over this. Probably never will. Die when I’m thirty for lack of sleep.”

“…Really?” She says, looking at you with morbid curiosity.

“Did I sleep tonight?” you say. She lets it rest.

You think of something else. “And It’s mercenary, not murderer. There’s a big difference. Mainly in the ‘I’m stuck with this to pay the bills’ rather than ‘killing people because it gives you warm fuzzies’ sense. I like to believe I’m not a total psychopath.”

She nods.

“Did you always use a sword? What’s the deal with swords in your family anyway?”

“Hey, the Katana is baddass! I went through the trouble to find and authentic one!” you laugh and she hides a smile. “I don’t know there’s probably some psychological reason like I wanted to be a main character from an anime to distance myself from what I was doing, but I honestly think the swords were just because they were cool. We’ll never know because all the shrinks are dead.”

“And not because of me! That was an apocalypse joke, God!” You add in a hurry.

“Why didn’t you ever go to college?” She asks, surprising you.

“Well, a lot of reasons.” You sigh. You shift in your chair and fold your arms on your chest. “It was pretty difficult balancing a double life, and I was just in high school. Then I wasn’t getting paid enough to cover four years in state, never mind the distant hope of moving away and leaving shit behind. That and I was taking care of Dave, I couldn’t just leave him. But when it comes right down to it, I don’t think I believed I was talented enough, I couldn’t figure out what I was good at, besides, _you know._ So I never applied.”

“What!” she whisper shouts. “Shut up you are so talented! What about Computer Science? What about Mechanical engineering? What about _Exercise_ Science?”

You laugh, embarrassed. “Maybe. Someday.”

She sits thinking, chin on her knee where she’d curled up in the armchair. “I still can’t believe you’re son of The Mr. Strider. I had no idea he had a family.”

“No one did.” You say. 

“Did you ever find out what happened to him?”

“Don’t you remember?” you look at her. “It made national news.”

She shakes her head.

You swallow, throat suddenly dry. “He’d killed himself. Took one of the skateboards from his movies and jumped off the statue of liberty.”

“Oh my god. I do remember that.” She says, staring in the distance. Then she looks back at you. “Dirk I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. But it was hard on Dave. And it made me so mad that he’d never told anyone about us, left _nothing_ behind for us. I was sixteen, for God’s sake! And he left me to take care of Dave on my own. It crushed him, and I just couldn’t bring myself to feel anything about it. Dad was gone, and I felt like I never really knew him at all.”

You sigh not knowing what else to say. For a little bit you both watch the gray morning grow lighter. 

Roxy gives a small snort. “Makes my family look like a fifties sit com. Not that I’m comparing.”

“Nah it’s alright. I just hope you understand why I never said anything about my past. For a long time people would tell me I was lying when I said I was related to him. Then he was gone and no one would believe me. I didn’t want, I just, I needed to feel like I was legitimate. I couldn’t be proud of what I’d done with my life, and couldn’t be known for the one part that was good. I needed someone to believe that I was real. I needed to believe I could be a good person too.” You sigh, fighting through the words. “When I was finally able to find those people I was so afraid I would lose you the second you knew the truth” You say. 

She looks at you. “About your dad?”

“About me,” you say. “I’m not a good person Rox. Look at what I’ve done.”

She sighs, and then leans into you. You stiffen, and then relax a little. “You still can be,” she murmurs.

You can feel her eyes watching you, waiting for a response, but you offer none. A gust outside blows some of the first leaves off the trees in the front yard. Like liberated birds they swirl up toward the gray clouds. One gets stuck on the screen in the window, jerking and twisting, caught between the ground and the sky.

 

When Jane stumbles into the kitchen, Roxy gets up to join her. You take a moment then to go and pick up the things you left by the computer. Warily you push the power button again. It stays dark. It was probably nothing. Anyone can tap into cctv these days. As much as you try to put it out of your mind, uneasiness eats you. Then you go to get breakfast.


	9. Chapter 9

**DIRK: Eat Breakfast Like a Civil Man.**

By the time you make your way into the kitchen Jane and Roxy are already getting out bowls of dry cereal, and rehydrating powdered milk. Gotta be grateful for people who still buy the stuff, nasty as it is. You’d guess from the Maple tones of the cupboards, hung very low, this probably used to be some grandma’s home. Not the guy in the shower’s. Wonder if he hydrated some milk too.

Shaking your head to clear the thought, you get a bowl from a shelf and join the cereal party. Cereal’s fine, but you’ll be excited when there’s something else to eat one of these days.

Gradually more of the group begins to rise with the morning. It’s odd, you hadn’t noticed how comfortable you’d gotten with being around Jane, Jake, and Roxy. They lean together while they chew on bran, and watch the window where in the back yard the leaves are starting to take on the faintest yellow. Like steel the sky hardens over; another gray day. It takes watching John coming in to grab breakfast to help you realize the silence of the morning. Or maybe they’re still mad at you. You look at them across the little dining table, but neither seem particularly irritated that you’re there. 

John sits next to Jane and begins the day with conversation. He asks Jane about what kind of things she likes to make for breakfast, and Roxy jumps in to validate Jane’s claims to baking fame. Out of the corner of your eye the mayor comes in and instead of grabbing a bowl of cereal, opens a can and grabs a spoon. 

Then Dave walks in. you meet eyes and he hesitates in the hallway, but then comes in and sits across from John, far from you down the table. He quickly joins the conversation, adding his two cents, however inflated his opinions or understanding of cooking may be. You think about correcting him, but decide against it. They start to make a list of what they’ll order at the first real restaurant they see.

“What about you Dirk?” Roxy asks, picking on you as you fish out the last of your corn flakes. 

You shrug. “Whatever looks good I guess?”

Out of the corner of your eye you see Dave swirling his cereal. He’s as outwardly blank as you are, but you know he’s dying in his seat right now.

“Probably Chinese,” You answer properly. 

Jade and the other girl, Rose arrive shortly after. Jade avoids you entirely, but you feel rose’s curious gaze lingering. You’re done with your cereal so you get up and wash the bowl out in the sink. Then you head to the front room alone.

 

**Rose: Get the Scoop on Bro Strider.**

The Breakfast conversation is adequate, but to be honest there are more interesting things prodding your consciousness at the moment. Dave has been particularly recalcitrant since being reunited with his brother, and the change in behavior is intriguing to say the least. Especially after the show yesterday. One would think that Dave would be brash and overconfident as always, especially if he has as little respect for his brother as he desperately wants to portray. Not that it’s any of your business. But you don’t see whatever it is that has him so subdued by his sibling. It’s a maddening secret and you want to get to the bottom of it. 

So, you grab your bowl, and excusing yourself past Jane and the sudden quiet of the breakfast table, follow the older Strider to the front room.

He’s busy with his back to you, buckling that katana of his to his side. 

“So is that a real Japanese, or did you find that at a pawn shop?” You ask him.

He turns and looks at you, somewhat surprised. You can be a soft footed feline when you want to be. He turns back to his backpack stuffing a small leather pouch back inside. You start to wonder if you’ve broken some sort of code of honor, but then he says “I purchased it from a man in Osaka.”

“Ah, so it’s legitimate,” you say. You perch on the arm of the couch, just above the sleeping zombie. Jake. His name was Jake. 

Strider the older nods, zips the backpack and sets it by the door. Then, he looks around the room a bit, before settling in one of the chairs propped by the window. “So,” he looks at you finally, or at least you’re pretty sure he’s looking at you behind those shades. “You’re Rose.”

“I am,” You nod. “And you’re… Dirk,”

He doesn’t indicate that this is right or wrong.

“Like a short sword,” you continue, sizing him up. 

“Technically it’s a long dagger.” 

“Right,”

“Used for thrusting.” He balls a fist at his hip, and then points his index finger. So much for subtext; He’ll have to do a lot better to make you uncomfortable.

“Must have been a misnomer then,” you say.

“Oh?” a single eyebrow raises behind the glasses. “Why’s that?”

“Well, for one thing, if any clever person were willing to name a baby after a long thrusting object, a mere dagger would hardly suffice for such an outward assertion of their child’s dominance.” You watch him before continuing. “And for another there’s no way it’s that long.”

“You got me,” he says, “My name is actually Dale. I’m incredibly average in every way.”

“And Dave’s lying about what your name is?” you say, letting a smile play at your lips.

“That’s assuming he’s said my name in your company,” he says.

Now that you think about it, John’s the one who brought it up. Dave neither confirmed nor denied his name. Well shoot. 

He smiles just slightly at your consternation. “I’m shitting you. My name is really Dirk.”

“Well, that was a wild ride, start to finish. Well played,” you say.

He gives a small nod to his head, a sign of cordial pleasure. “Tell me,” he says, “How did Dave wind up friends with a qualified writer of psychology today?”

“He didn’t really have a choice in the matter,” you say, “I saw a soul in need and descended to his level to lift him up. He’s come a long way.”

“Is that where he picked up Ergo?” he asks.

You smile, remembering. “I was so proud.”

He actually huffs a little in laughter. “Well done. You have achieved what I couldn’t.”

The compliment appears to be sincere. It brings a glow of pride to your heart. But you’re not here for compliments. 

“Why is that?” you ask. “I know Dave can be a bit inert when it comes to clever conversation, but he’s not unintelligent, nor unperceptive. How does one spend all their formative years with someone and yet value them so little as to conveniently forget to mention that he exists?”

It’s almost imperceptible, but he flinches back just a little. “He never told you about me?”

“Not until John mentioned you a few days ago.” You watch as he looks out the window. He doesn’t say anything. “You two are so different. If you didn’t look like each other I would hardly say you’re related.” 

He seems lost in thought as he watches outside. Distantly you can hear the sound of cleaning in the kitchen. The likelihood someone will have the presence of person or mind to appreciate cleanliness is low, but the tendrils of society grip us hard, you think. He doesn’t speak, but you wait, knowing now that he’ll answer. When he does, it’s not what you’d expect. “I would have thought he’d say something.”

He is very odd. The procession in the kitchen is close to over, as too will be your interview. “Weren’t you the one who just tried to hide his identity behind his brother’s tight lips?” you ask, trying to understand him.

“Ah, see, we share that. We’re not so different after all.” He says, evading. Damn. Later then. Roxy and Jane come down the hallway carrying their backpacks, and you decide that you should get ready as well. 

Another Day, Another futile march against impending doom.

 

**Dave: Figure Out Where This Ragtag Band of Misfits Is Going.**

In the small guest bedroom you and John shared you grab your backpack and wonder briefly what the plan is for the day. You check your sword on your hip, in the makeshift holster you’d found for it didn’t match the 14th century blade, but it protected your legs and had a healthy weight to it. Your hand rests on the hilt of the sword, which was named Caledfwlch as the plaque on its display case had said, and even though it is of welsh make the sword holds no mettle to the legendary namesake. In fact, considering the tarnish and rust on the handle it’s kind of incredible it hasn’t broken yet. But you’d needed a sword, so you’d capitalized on some good fortune and the touring exhibit featured this month at the Dallas Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Zombies don’t care much for observing history anyway, unless it’s being wielded straight through their chest. Then maybe they care. But only a little.

John comes in from the kitchen where he’d been packing his bag, adjusting the straps and buckling the chest together. “Ready to cut up some dead bodies?” he smirks, watching you fiddle with the sword.

“Wow that’s incredibly morbid. Don’t disrespect the dead dude. It just invites bad luck.” But in any case your thumb nervously pops the hilt a couple times, the motion akin to flipping the lid on a lighter. The weight of the hilt slides the sword back into the scabbard, hitting back down with a satisfying snap.

John grabs his backpack, and then swings his sledgehammer into the loop on his pants. “Do you think Zombies dream?” he asks out of the blue.

The thought makes you frown. “Uhh, I have no idea. Fuck John, do you make a list of deep emotionally compromising shit to ask or is this all ad-libbed?”

“It was just a question.” He smirks and shakes his head.

“Oh well, you should ask one while bashing its head in. It might prove enlightening.”

The two of you head together toward the front of the house, because that seems to be the thing to do. When you get to the front room your brother is talking to his friends quietly.

“So, what is the plan for today?” you say to the room. You don’t look at him but you already know he’ll be the one to answer.

“Get out of Dodge.”

“Holy Shit what a great plan,” you say, “No really, where are we going?”

He gets a sharpie out of his pocket, and after looking blankly at the coffee table, begins to draw on it. You notice briefly that Jade and Rose appear in the hall behind you, and peer over John’s shoulder at what dirk is drawing. 

“We’ll follow the freeway today, and try to hit a corner store for some supplies. We should be able to make it to the edge of the traffic, ideally, then it shouldn’t be too hard to find a car or two to borrow. Then we’ll head to Memphis.”

He points at Roxy. “I’ll have you and Jane lead, we’ll need good eyes for long range today, and you two work well defensively. Just don’t distract each other.”

She nods, giving him a look of sass at his comment. You like her. In an I-can-respect-you-for-taking-no-shits-from-this-ass kind of way.

He looks up at your group, and seems to decide something. “Take John with you at the front. Jake and I will be at the rear. Dave, Jade, Rose, and the mayor will be center. Make sense?” He caps the pen like an enlistment. The question is just rhetorical courtesy. 

In truth it does make sense to you, two firearms spaced evenly between differing close range combat types, more likely to counter attacks from the front or rear. You’re not really sure why John has to be at the front but three and three is a good spread. Plus the Mayor. Can’t forget the Mayor.

Dirk bends to pick up his backpack and looks to Roxy. “Will you make sure we have everything we need? And then I’ll have you take everyone outside first, so I can work on getting Jake off the couch.”

“We got everything, Dirk it’s fine.” She says, “Stop worrying.”

Okay well, he doesn’t really need emotional coddling. In a weird way you pity that she’s been sucked into his charm. In any case, there goes the hope that she keeps him in line. 

“I don’t know why we’re all just following along,” You huff under your breath. “This is ridiculous.”

“Do you have something to share with the class David?” He says without looking at you. Shit, he heard you. Fuck. 

You try to hide any reaction. No emotional rise will end well, only a cool argument will put an end to this. “Yeah I do. I think this is ridiculous, I’m not gonna walk around with a zombie all day again.”

“You seemed fine with it yesterday.”

“Yeah well I’m Not Fine with it Dirk.” You say, measuring words. “And my name is not David. It’s Dave. Says so on my birth certificate, if you don’t mind being correct when you call me by name.”

“Oh I’m sorry Dave. I guess I’m not allowed to use pet names affectionately for family.”

“You mean like a nun uses a full name and a ruler affectionately?” You say. “And you know what else I can’t wrap my mind around, why we’re letting you give orders left and right. Since when did we live under a dictatorship?”

He takes a step toward the couch between you, sword hand absently gripping the handle. “I’m sorry, you want to say that again? I don’t think I could hear it under the sound of bitching.”

“It’s not so much complaining as pointing out fallacy,” You take a step in challenge. “Quit being a condescending jackass.”

“Whoa Hey!” Roxy Jumps between you both arms wide. But instead of Dirk, she turns on you. “Okay! We get it! You two don’t like each other! So pack up your ego, or we’re going to leave you in Dallas!”

You recoil, stung. You’re not the one who’s Ego is out of control. But you look around, met by disapproval from the Dirk squad, and blank expressions from your friends. 

“So we are all fine with being told what’s good for us?” you ask the room. “Really?”

“Having a leader isn’t necessarily bad, Dave. And Dirk’s Plan isn’t going to compromise our understandings of democracy,” Rose says quietly. 

“It’s just until we can get somewhere safe.” John mumbles.

Even Jade looks away. “I hate to admit it, but he’s right. We’ll have to take the highway out of here, and we’ll be safer as a group.”

You’re at a loss for words. You shake your head. “Fine,” you say. “We’ll do it his way.”

You watch as they follow Roxy out the front door. When it’s your turn you won’t look at him. Just because you’re going along with all of this doesn’t mean you have to like it.

Resolved, you follow them outside.

 

**John: Aren’t You Forgetting Something?**

The stray thought strikes you as you’re standing on the front lawn waiting to go. You try to push it from your mind, but the nagging feeling won’t leave you alone. Trying to abate your concerns you pad your pockets, making sure the usual assortment of matches, Joke shop bubblegum and pop-its’ are there. Your hammer is heavy and hard to miss, you even pad your face and make sure you’re wearing your glasses. 

Jane notices your fidgeting. “John are you okay? Did you forget anything?”

“No,” You say, trying to convince yourself. “Everything’s here…”

She shrugs and returns to talking to Roxy about whether Charlie Chaplain or Cary Grant was a more influential actor. It’s fairly interesting, and you yourself have been known to emulate some of Chaplains quirks from time to time, but for whatever reason you can’t focus on the conversation. Deciding that you just have to go and look to see if you forgot something, you head back to the house. 

The front door is still ajar, and you head right in, but then stop a couple steps inside. Dirk has his back to you, and when he speaks, you step back outside. 

“Come on man, you can’t just sleep all day,” He prods the zombie in the shoulder. “Get up.” 

This is met by a moan, as it curls deeper into the couch. Watching this exchange you feel intrusive, but you’re also immensely curious.

“Ugh Jake.” He grabs him by the shoulders and tries to pull him up. The zombie protests louder, and hangs on to the couch’s frame. “It’s gonna be fine! I’m gonna find you something to eat today. How about that?”

The zombie lets go of the couch, but goes limp in his arms. Dirk stumbles backward at the loss of resistance, but then sags with his weight. Readjusting he loops his arms under the zombie’s armpits, and tries to drag its legs off the couch. It’s marginally effective.

“Jake stand up, oh my God.” Dirk says. Jake’s chest heaves in a sigh.

“Ugh! Fine.” Dirk lifts him back onto the couch, and then changes tactics. He scoops up Jake by the shoulders and knees, and with a grunt hefts him off the couch. He staggers back, and then tries to dip the zombie’s feet to the ground. The limp body isn’t very cooperative, his knees buckle and threaten to crumple to the floor. 

Puffing Dirk picks him back up. “Jake I am not going to carry you all day you weigh a fucking ton. Even as an emaciated invalid. Help me out man.”

Then he tries again, and to your astonishment, the limp arms wrap around Dirk’s shoulders, and shakily hold on while the two struggle to find an upright position. When The zombie is finally standing, Dirk unwraps its arms from around his shoulders, and steps back to let Jake stand on his own. The lanky frame weaves, and begins to fall to the side. 

Dirk catches his arm and pulls him back straight. “Shit, man, you were not kidding. Okay.” He wraps a single arm around his shoulder, and lets the zombie lean its weight on him. “Okay. Well. This’ll have to work I guess.”

Dirk starts to bring Jake around to the door, and you start in embarrassment. Before he can see you, you skip backward back to the lawn. Trying for nonchalant you pretend to listen to Jane and Roxy, who’ve changed to talking about the weather. 

“Did you find what you needed?” Roxy asks.

“Uh,” you shrug your shoulders. “Yeah I think I did.”

They look back as Dirk and Jake shuffle outside. He gives a nod to Roxy. 

“Okay let’s go.” She says, and you follow her down the street.

 

 

**Jane: What a Remarkably Normal Day.**

For a zombie apocalypse it has been pretty nice actually. You’ll admit that at the start of the day the sky had been super dark and gloomy, but over time the clouds dissipated into the usual misty blue southern haze. It makes walking for hours on end easier, at least in the ‘my-feet-are-killing me-but-the-sun-is-out’ sense. 

Sometime after one everyone had been dying for lunch, at which point the neighborhood had dropped away and left everyone in this suburb’s shopping district. By unspoken consensus you stayed as far away from large public structures as possible. That meant the mall was out. Many of the corner stores had been ransacked by previous pillagers, who had left little in their wakes. Eventually though, you’d struck gold at an Albertsons where the doors had been barricaded shut by some grocery carts inside. After hoisting John through a high air vent in the back, it was pretty easy for him to open the doors.

Once fed it was decided that trying the freeway was the way to go. The nine of you had woven your way up a ramp, through the cars, and stood in astonishment at the miles of concrete and empty vehicles. Well, not completely empty. Some were very not empty. The smell of the dead was definitely worse where it was more concentrated, and it was awful on the freeway. But surprisingly, there were no zombies. They probably had as little interest in death as the living did. 

For the most part that stretch was walked in silence. At some point people decided Dallas bound lanes were stupid, and filled both sides of the median trying to escape. The signs of struggle and grime left from where people had fought zombies, hidden in cars, and either been drug to their afterlife or worse, chosen a bullet or a blade instead was horrendous. Up till now, you’d seen some things that you might not have wanted to, but it didn’t really compare to the freeway.

Despite that, it was the way out. 

Until the pile-up. 

It stretched across eight lanes, contained likely hundreds of cars, blew through the median, and was charred so black you couldn’t tell metal from mutilated bodies. With some effort you’d crawled through the wreckage on the shoulder, to get a look ahead. The roads were just as clogged past the barrier, but chaotic, cars had scattered from lanes, dented and scarred each other in an obvious mass panic. 

“Yeah, I vote we skip this part.” Dave said. The lone opinion was jarring, after so much silence, but exactly what you were feeling. When Roxy led up the side of the road to the fence you were more than relieved. 

When you dropped down on the other side of the barrier you were surprised to find yourself in someone’s backyard. Usually city zoning made it pretty impossible to put housing developments so close to the freeway. There were laws about noise you’re pretty sure. But then, as everyone moved through the yard and into the front, you notice that the houses here are very different. They’re brick and mortar like regular houses, but shaped in a way that felt distinctly not human. The bricks were where the resemblance began and ended. Windows were high on the walls and multifaceted, rooms were planned almost to defy any central shape, jutting in and out of the structural profile in what looked like a random pattern.

“Where are we?” you ask, feeling like you’ve stepped off of planet earth into something else entirely.

“It’s a Troll Neighborhood.” Dirk’s says behind you, shouldering Jake up. He looks about as comfortable with the idea as he might be with chopping off his own arm. Which is to say, not much disturbed from his usual brand of stoicism. “Let’s just keep moving. The sooner we get out of here the better.”

So together you moved loosely north east. Trolls are an interesting subject for most people, but for you especially. Your Grandmother was part of the committee that established peace between the two species. You knew this, but yet you knew very little about what that actually means. In fact, somehow there was very little known about how the trolls came to be at all. History is well documented with Human accomplishments, and you can take courses upon Troll mythology, but the two rarely coincide. You figure that’s just because of cultural differences, which by the looks of their houses there must be plenty. 

In some ways you felt a duty to be culturally tolerant, but had admittedly neglected that duty when it came to interacting with the subjects at hand. The limited experiences you have had have been honestly less than savory. As a matter of default you spent time with Humans, doing human things, and had always just projected that Trolls do human things too. Right?

Walking through their neighborhood, their turf as it were, you had to admit it didn’t look that way, and despite how silly it was you couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outsider. You didn’t belong here. You weren’t even wanted here. Though whom would be around to share that opinion is anybody’s guess.

After some time though, the feeling of being watched intensifies. You search the high windows and scooped rooftops looking for the eyes you know are there, or a shadow that doesn’t match the shapes only to find a tree branch, or errant cloud. You shake yourself. Come on now, there’s nothing there, you think, don’t work yourself up over nothing.

So you focus on Roxy and her confident walk. She’s the only one who seems not that troubled by the change in surrounding. 

But then there it is again. You snap your eyes to the right just in time to see a shape duck behind a corner in the roofline. You stop dead, and John bumps into your back. 

“What, what is it?” he says, dazed. 

“I thought I saw something,” You say, staring at the point, waiting for the shadow to reappear. But it doesn’t.

You feel silly, and everyone waits while you watch. “I guess it was nothing,” You say, “Probably just a cat.”

After a beat everyone begins to move again, and you follow.

Hopefully it’s just a cat.

 

**Dirk: Be Really Paranoid.**

You know Jane saw something, even if she won’t admit it.

There’s a couple of things that could happen. Well, really there’s a lot of things, but to save time you narrow it down to two generalizations. Zombies, or Trolls. Right now you’re not sure which one you’d prefer more.

It’s particularly troublesome because the last couple of hours you’d been dragging Jake along more than supporting him. And the prospect of fighting or running from something has you a little nervous, because you’re just not sure that Jake can run. You suppose if worse came to worse you could pick him up and carry him, but it’s not like you’d be winning any races that way.

But as you look to the roof Jane was searching you get the feeling that whatever it was she saw wouldn’t bring on a large force to run from. Maybe they’ll just leave you alone. 

You’re not going to bank on it though. 

Gently you push Jake more vertical, unwrapping your arm from his shoulders. He protests a little bit, until you grab his hand and allow him to hang onto your arm. It’s a little bit more mobility anyway. You stretch the palm of your sword hand in anticipation.

As you pass the house you start to think that maybe nothing will happen. 

And then you hear a blood curdling scream coming from the sky.

In one fluid movement you draw your sword and spin around Jake’s back, confronting the attack. You swing the katana up just in time to deflect two sickles, and fling the troll wielding them to the ground. Jake, hanging on for dear life, swings from your hand and rolls on the pavement. 

Worried, you try to see if he’s okay, but have to face the troll again as he flings himself at you. Well, actually it looks like he’s bee-lining for Jake, you just happen to disagree with that particular course of action. At the same time though, it’s not like you can just cut them up like a zombie. In fact, it’s probably best not to cut them at all, who knows how long it’s been since you’ve properly sanitized this blade.

You step into their path, sweep your blade in an open guard hooking the sickles, and give the troll a swift side kick to the chest. They fly like a ragdoll, but then roll over their shoulder in a practiced movement. When they look up, their yellow eyes lock on yours. 

Launching from the road they run at you, full of fury. Coolly you keep out of their reach, made easier by an unfair difference in stature. Seeing an opportunity you twist your blade through one sickle on the downswing, and then use a roundhouse to kick it out of their hand. The weapon slides off your sword and slides out of reach. 

They come at you with new abandon. No cutting, no cutting, you think, ducking a swing, feeling a little limited by the close combat. Disarm them without hurting them. Well, without hurting them too much. 

Seeing the blade gleam above your head you shift your grip and swing to deflect it. But then like missing a stair your swing goes un-resisted; the troll yells triumphantly and swings the sickle in a long arc with the other hand, point driving for your face.

Well fuck.

Then a force knocks the both of you to the ground. 

Defensively you drop the katana, an instinct from practiced falling. You tumble until the weight rolls off of you, then look up. 

To see Jake on top of the troll. 

Well fuck!

You scramble up and race to pull Jake off. It’s pretty gnarly, the troll is kicking and pushing Jake back, screaming like a banshee. For good reason though, Jake has his sickle arm by the teeth, and doesn’t show any sign of letting go. 

Grabbing his hair you pull him backward ignoring the pitch change from the troll. Then you slide your arm into the space created under his neck and flex, choking him out. He hangs on though. A normal person would pass out within ten seconds, but Jake doesn’t seem to care about passing out. Growling you lift him and the troll off the ground, “Goddammit English LET GO!”

A gunshot cracks through the air, and all three of you flinch. Jake drops the troll, and you and he fall backward into the street.

In the aftershock your senses come back to you, like you’d been in a tunnel without realizing it.

“Holy Shit!”

“Oh my god! Oh my god!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

“Hoooly shit!”

Blinking you look around, seeing the group in scattered states of shock and fear. The troll is rolling on the ground holding its arm. Looking for the source of the gunshot you see Roxy with her rifle pointed at the sky. 

Jake starts to struggle in your grip, pawing at your arm around his neck. You loosen the hold, but then he starts to roll away from you. You grab his arm and twist it around his back, and then using your elbow push him to the ground again. For final measure, you sit on him. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

“Would someone please make him stop screaming!?” you yell at the people standing around in shock. 

Roxy answers by firing another shot at the clouds. It’s enough to break the troll off, and before it can catch its breath she steps up to him. 

“Hey! You’re not dead! Shut up!” she shouts, and then bends down close to it. It flinches away hiding its arm. “Let me see that, we need to clean it out.”

“RRAAAGH NO!” the troll shouts at the ground. 

“Okay, we need to go,” you break their exchange, nervousness increasing. Everything in about five miles will be able to hear this troll yelling at the top of his lungs.

“What about that troll,” Roxy says.

“What about him,” you say. You test Jake, and then stand when you see the fight’s gone out of him.

“Jake Just bit his arm!” She points at the troll as if you didn’t know, exasperated. “We’re not gonna just leave him!”

“Hey man you okay?” Dave says, stepping closer. He stops near its head.

“NO I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY!” The troll shouts at his shoes.

“Here let me take a look at that,” he says, trying to roll it over.

“NO! WHY IN ANY SCENARIO WOULD I LET YOU LOOK AT MY BLOOD? NO, STOP, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME YOU SOFT PINK GRUB MUNCH!” It curls into itself, swiping at Dave defensively.

“Oh my god no one cares what color your blood is you stupid troll!” you shout at him, taking a few steps toward him before Roxy holds up her arm to stop you.

“Hey, Dirk, you’re not helping. How about you go do something else.” Dave says.

“Ugh we do not have time for this!” you search the street in front and behind, looking for any signs of zombies. 

“OH WELL IM SORRY I JUST TRIED TO SAVE YOU FROM A ZOMBIE YOU SHITFUCK!” It spits at you.

“Stop yelling! Jimminy Christmas do you want to bring a mob of zombies raining down on us????” 

“You know what YEAH! I DO, BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT! YOU’RE A BUNCH OF INCOMPETANT LOSERS WHO DESERVE TO DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS!”

“Dirk seriously go over there,” Dave insists.

“Come on,” Roxy says, steering you away back to Jake. You let her do it even though you’re seething. You look over your shoulder and watch as Jane and Dave’s friends circle around the troll. It’s a wide circle though. 

“Seriously man, you don’t even have to show me, but let me at least wrap your arm.” Dave says to it.

“RRRAAAGH NO,” 

“I think I can help” Jade says.

“YEAH HOW SHIT BITCH?” It glares up at her. 

“Look, you’re hurt but you don’t have to be rude!” Jade says.

“IT’S NOT RUDE IF IT’S OBSERVATIONALLY TRUE.” It focuses on hiding its arm, turning away from her.

“Ugh! This is why you trolls get such a bad rap! I could wrap your arm because I’m colorblind, but NO, you have to be a dumb-dumby dumb guy who nobody likes!” She yells. 

“THAT’S A GREAT INSULT I’LL HAVE TO WRITE THAT ONE DOWNwait you’re colorblind?” Its head snaps back up.

“Yeah. But I’m not going to help you when you’re mean!” She kneels down next to them.

“No! You aren’t listening I’m not being mean! I-Owowow” He complains when she grabs the sleeve of their sweater. 

“Just let me look at it. Dave, give us blanket cover.”

“On it.” He unties the Mayor’s cans momentarily and spreads the blanket out around his shoulders like a cape. He stands with his back to them, partially obscuring your view.

“There see? That’s not so bad.”

“You, you really can’t tell what color it is?”

“Uhm, not really. It could be green, or blue, or brown. I’m not sure, but it’s probably not the same color as your skin.”

“Oh.” The troll says. 

“What’s your name?” Jade asks, winding an ace bandage up his arm.

“Karkat Vantas.”

“Car Cat?” Jade giggles. 

“What is so funny about my name!?” he bristles. You roll your eyes.

“Nothing! It’s a good name!” she says. “I’m Jade.”

Impatient, you walk back and pick up your katana where you’d dropped it. You keep checking the houses to make sure nothing is moving that shouldn’t be. The metal hisses slightly as the sword slides into its sheath.

“Oh my god.” You hear Jade say. You walk back to Roxy and wait.

“What?” Dave says looking over his shoulder.

“OH MY GOD WHAT PART OF NOT LOOKING DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND??” Karkat yells pulling his arm back into his chest.

“Sorry,” Dave says, turning around.

“How, how, how…?” Jade says, pointing at the troll.

“SORRY I DON’T SPEAK STUTTER, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE A BIT MORE SPECIFIC.”

“Those bites… those aren’t like… you didn’t do that to yourself?” she says.

“NO! WHY THE FUCK WOULD I SIT AROUND AND BITE MYSELF?”

“Then they’re not, those aren’t”

“YOU CAN JUST SAY IT! GOD! THEY’RE ZOMBIE BITES YEAH.”

“What?” you say, interest piqued. The rest of the gang contracts in on the troll with morbid curiosity. You follow Roxy as she walks closer.

“No way.” Jane says.

“Holy crap!” John leans over her shoulder.

“STOP LOOKING! FUCK!” Karkat shouts, hand grasping his new bandage. Desperately trying to cover the wound he’s unable to pull his sleeve back down from where Jade had rolled it; she hurries to fix it but not before you can see the crescent shaped scabs that had almost greyed over into scars.

“Holy shit,” you say, breathing next to Roxy’s shoulder. “You know what this means right?”

She steps back and looks at you. “You don’t think he’s…?”

“Immune?” you finish. You use your eyes to point back and forth between him and her. Then you realize your glasses might be too dark for that. “Yeah. I do.”

She stares at you showing the shock you feel.

Then you notice movement over her shoulder. Jake’s sat up straight, head turned away like he’s listening for something.

You look in Roxy’s eyes. “We need to go. Like now.”

She nods.

You push your way into the circle and stand over the Troll. “I changed my mind you’re coming with us. Get up.” You reach down and pull him up by his good arm.

“HEY, WHAT THE HELL!” he fights against you.

“I swear to God you are the loudest fucking troll I have ever had the misfortune to meet.” You shake his arm so he looks at you. “Because of you we’re about to get mobbed by zombies. So you better shut up and get your ass moving, or I will personally enjoy leaving you behind.”

You push him into John. “Walk with him.”

You refocus and go to help Jake up off the street.

“WHY!?” he shouts after you.

“Quietly!” you say ignoring the question, pulling Jake’s arm around your shoulder.

When you turn around you see that he’s still standing there glaring at you. The others are grabbing backpacks and weapons, Roxy already walking down the street. The troll stays where he is.

“Get your sickles dumbass we’re leaving!” you start to shuffle past him. 

“For what reason on this stupid craggy planet would I want to go with you!?” he looks between you and Jake with disgust.

There’s the sound of breaking glass somewhere down the street. You don’t really need to look to see the zombies, the sudden shock and fear on Karkat’s face is enough to know they’re there.

“Oh I don’t know, lesser of two evils, something like that,” you say while calmly taking Jake’s arm back around your shoulders. You grunt with the effort of lifting him into a fireman’s carry, and give the troll one last look before starting to Jog.

It takes two beats before Karkat snatches his sickles and sprints past you, catching up with the rest of the group easily. 

As for you, well, you’re definitely not winning any races. Jake, though drastically lighter than he used to be, is still a good hundred plus pounds of dead weight. Your thighs are already screaming, and it’s only been about a hundred meters. Jake Grips the back of your shirt, as a matter of warning. You can hear the sounds of scuffing feet closing the distance, and he knots his fingers harder. “I know!” You tell him. Time for a plan b.

“ROXY!” you shout ahead to get her attention. “We have to get back over the barrier!”

She turns back and sees how far behind you are, and reorganizes the group. You watch as she points Dave to an open gate through some troll’s backyard. He takes everyone except Jade and Rox with him, who prime their weapons and begin firing at the zombies behind you. 

You race through the backyard, stopping at the foot of the concrete wall to take Jake off your shoulders. You lean him up on the barrier, climb up and sit on the top. “Okay, just like last time. Ready?” you ask him even though there’s no visible sign that he’s listening. Still you grab his hands, and he uses his feet to walk up the wall. You’re still doing most of the work, but at least you don’t have to drag him like a limp body. Roxy and Jade run back and leap up the wall just as he’s rolling prone to the top. They’re over in a matter of seconds, it’s enough time though for the first zombies to stagger past the gate. “Alright we’re outta time.” You hop down the other side, and grab one of his legs to pull him down. He falls on you, and the both of you collapse ungracefully in the bushes.

With not a few curses you right yourself and pull him back over your shoulder. The barrier will help, but it won’t hold a mob back forever. 

You jog down the short slope where Jade and Roxy are waiting for you, and then together you begin weaving through the chaos of cars and corpses after the others.

After about fifty meters you hear another crash in the bushes behind you, followed by a screech from the undead. Roxy pauses a few feet ahead of you and aims her rifle. You shake your head at her, “We have got to stop making so much noise, or they’ll never stop coming.”

She pulls the barrel up “Well then, what are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll lose them! The freeway bridges over a lake, if we can get over they’ll be bottlenecked and we can lose them on the other side.”

“I don’t think this is a very good idea.” She says, jogging beside you.

“I didn’t think helping along the shouty troll was a good idea until it was,” you point out. 

“Fair point,” she says. “You better be right Dirk.”

She still looks nervously over her shoulder from time to time, until she says, “Can’t you run any faster?”

“Hey! You try lugging around a six foot invalid, it is not easy!” you puff at her. 

Then you hear what sounds like a zombie running into the hood of a car. It’s not very far behind you. You pump your legs faster. 

The concrete barriers close in and neighborhoods fall away as the road opens out over water. You focus so hard on speed you don’t notice that the group ahead of you has stopped until Roxy pulls up beside you. 

“We’re dead!” Someone is saying, and you nudge past Jane to see what’s going on. 

Six feet ahead the road crumbles to a sudden edge. Beyond that you can see the dark green of the lake below, before the freeway emerges out of the water like a wounded animal in the distance. 

It just makes you angry. You mean, honestly, what is the point of performing a world class fireman’s carry if you’re just going to get cornered on a collapsed bridge and eaten anyway? Hell No! 

“We’re not gonna die!” you say, “Now help me find an open car.”

They fan out as you lean Jake on a locked sedan, and begin trying doors. John finds an open Subaru. You jog over and search the car quickly, to find the keys dropped by the driver’s seat. Sweet. 

The car is nice, probably an LX TR VQY whatever the luxury package is of this model; the point being the sound proofing seals in the doors. Among the choices, there probably isn’t one better for what you have in mind. You turn it on and shift it to neutral. Then you turn it off, get out, close the doors, lock it, and begin pushing it toward the edge. The others pick up on what you’re doing, and come to help. Together you gain momentum, until the car rolls off the edge of the street. There’s a pause while everyone recoils and then the car splashes into the Lake below.

“Alright! Everybody Jump!” You say when the cab bobs to the surface. “Pencil dives hurt less than cannon balls. Trust me.” 

“WHAT IF WE CAN’T SWIM?” 

Not needing to look to see who it is you say “That’s what the car is for. It won’t last forever, so hurry it up.”

You quickly go back to grab Jake. You can see the Zombies behind you, bumping their way through the mess of cars. 

You walk him over to the edge nearest the floating car. As everyone else splashes into the water below you stand Jake up as much as you can, and look down at the sheer face of the Lake. It looks as hard as concrete. In a second of vanity you pull off your glasses and put them in your waistband.

“I’m sorry, man,” you tell him, “this is going to hurt.” You grab him around the waist and step off the edge, trying to stay as upright as possible. The two seconds of freefall feels like forever. Your heart jumps into your throat, and you tilt uncontrollably toward the left. Then the cold surface impacts like a freight train. 

There’s a second where you’re stunned in the water. Your head rings, traumatized by the weird way water warps sound, competing against the burning needles of pain along your left side. Then you come to yourself. You kick upward, pulling yourself and the thing that clings to you to the surface.

You breach the chaos of murky green desperate for air. You can’t get enough. The deadweight around your shoulders keeps pulling you under, and you fight panic to get things under control. Roll onto your back. Scissor kick. When things feel steady you pull him up beside you so that his head is level with your chest. As you breathe you keep him afloat, and he starts to calm down, clinging less frantically. Then you point yourself toward the car.

When you throw his arms onto the back bumper Jane John and Karkat are already gasping beside you. Dave comes up on the other side dragging the mayor, and Roxy treads water not far behind. You don’t see Rose or Jade, but then you hear them on the other side of the car call out to Dave. Karkat crawls halfway onto the bumper before you can stop him, and you’re about to tell him to get off so the car won’t sink, but then you see his eyes are filled with murder for you. He can stay there you guess.

There’s a splash somewhere to your right, and you look around in surprise. You watch incredulous as the Zombies begin throwing themselves at you from above. They are determined.

“Everybody kick!” you shout, the anxiety showing in your voice. “Now!”

As one force you churn the water. At first it seems like nothing is happening, but then the cars steadily begins moving toward the other end of the collapsed bridge. The zombies in the water have varying levels of swimming competence, probably due to muscle memory of the hosts, but each begins to fall away and then disappear under the water. You watch Jake next to you as he hangs on the bumper. You didn’t think he could look any sicker, but the cold of the water had helped him reach a new shade of pale. Do zombies get hypothermia? You wonder. As you kick you pay close attention to his hands gripping the bumper, making sure he doesn’t drift away.

When the car drifts out from under the shadow of the broken bridge you begin to feel the distance, and remember how much swimming can take it out of you. Add to that clothes and a sedan and it makes lap swimming seem like a breeze. Sluggishly you kick, unwilling to stop. Next to you Jane is alternatingly kicking and drifting. The nice thing is you can’t hear zombies jumping from the bridge anymore. They must have realized swimming wasn’t worth the meal. Or the drowning. 

At long last you feel the car jolt when it scrapes against the pavement of the half submerged bridge. On impact Karkat hauls himself onto the trunk and crawls up the vehicle to the surface, and the others walk their hands along the car’s edge to the road. You drift in the water for a minute, letting the water soothe your sore muscles. You look back across the water at the smooth surface and the broken bridge. The bodies of zombies bob like white stones along the surface in a hauntingly familiar image. 

Turning away you realize that Jake’s face was in the water. Rushing to help him you lift his head up by the chin, and then shift your shoulder under his armpit to get him up. He droops, eyes closed, unnaturally still. 

“Oh my god,” you say pit growing in your stomach. You drag him around the car to the road, and then lay him down on the slanted pavement. The group is spread out in various stages of bedraggled resting, but they look up when you kneel down next to him. 

“Dirk what’s the matter?” Roxy asks.

“He’s not breathing,” you say, trying not to panic. You vaguely remember lifeguard training. “What am I supposed to do? Give him mouth to mouth?”

“No!” multiple voices say at once.

“I know, he’s a zombie!” you say, to no one in particular. From somewhere you remember something about rolling drowning victims on their sides if they spit up water. Maybe you can preemptively encourage him. You go through the transition, bending his knees and pulling his left arm out to the side for stability before rolling him over.

“LET IT DIE,” Karkat says, his back to you.

“Hey how about you come give him mouth to mouth?” you say, anger rising. “You’re probably the only person in the whole world who can!”

“Does he have a pulse,” Dave says, getting up and walking over. He doesn’t move to check though. 

You use your fingers to feel Jake's neck. But as you expect, you don’t feel anything. “He hasn’t had a real pulse for a couple days.” You stare at Dave’s shoes. 

“Roll him over and try CPR,” He tells you. 

You do as he says, surprised when he moves to stabilize Jake’s legs while you count out the pulses. Feeling out of practice, your arms shake with nerves as you try not to break any of Jake's ribs, but also try not to be ineffective. You don’t take breaks for breath, but still count out sets of five pulses. This continues for a couple of agonizing minutes. But then his chest fights back in a cough. You recoil, and then grab his shoulder to roll him over. Relieved you watch as he coughs up water. 

You feel Dave rise and move away. You look up at him but his back is to you. He moves to check up on the troll, who hisses at him. Actually hisses. You shake your head.

When Jake starts breathing in raspy gasps again you sit back and run your hands through your wet hair. There’s something significant missing from that motion. You fish your shades out of your waistband and put them on. Then you rock to your feet. 

“Alright we should get moving,” you say, already getting antsy. Either that or you’re trying to cover how close you came to losing it, and how much your knees are shaking.

“Really?” Jane says from where she sits on a tire. “We can’t even rest for a minute? You just brought Jake back from the dead. Again.” 

“It’s either that or wait for the leeches.” You say.

“Too late on that front,” John says, having rolled up his pants. He pulls the bloated blood sucker off and throws it back in the water.

“Ew!” Jane says.

“I’m ready,” Rose says, jumping up. 

“Me too,” Jade says.

You watch as they group up and begin walking up the slope. Where it gets steeper they huddle close to the concrete barrier, using it to crawl up to the freeway. 

You give Jake a minute, and then begin lifting him up. He doesn’t even help you. Feeling sorry for him, and yourself, you wrap his arms around your shoulders, and awkwardly heft him into a makeshift piggy back. Bending almost completely over, you grab his legs, and manage to find your balance. Your back is going to kill you tomorrow.

You look back at the other side of the bridge one last time. The zombies stand in a line, watching longingly stock still. 

“YEAH GOOD RIDDANCE!” Karkat yells at them further up the bridge.

“Let’s go, quietly!” you say. “Or do we need to do that over again so you’ll learn your lesson?”

“NOoo, thank you!” The troll says, lowering the volume. 

“I thought so.” You say, and follow them up the slope.


End file.
